


The Wise Father

by Mud_Lark



Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Case Fic, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Morse Whump, Mystery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-27
Updated: 2019-08-06
Packaged: 2019-09-01 04:57:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 49,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16758382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mud_Lark/pseuds/Mud_Lark
Summary: When Morse is found gravely injured, his friends in Oxford try to piece together the events that led to his assault.  Does Fred Thursday know his elusive sergeant well enough to follow his trail?Set between Series 5 and 6.  No spoilers for Series 6.





	1. Prologue

Max DeBryn watched her from the doorway for a long time. He was wondering how to approach her, wondering what on earth he should say. She was sitting alone, hugging her arms and staring blankly at a patch of snowy earth that had once, long ago, been a vegetable garden. Though it was no longer snowing, an icy wind was breathing down from the Radcliffe Infirmary’s steeply hipped roof, sweeping flakes of snow from frosted slate and age-blackened sandstone, making them flutter to the ground in gentle, unpredictable currents. The flurry gave the young woman in the garden the look of a figure in a snow-globe, sitting with hypnotic stillness inside a whirl of white. A breeze stirred the fine strands of her dark hair and turned her exposed hands, cheeks, and nose a raw frostbitten red. But DeBryn was sure that she noticed none of this. It was entirely possible that she didn’t know she had come outside without a coat. She was clearly lost in thought, the fingers of one hand plucking with minute, fretful movements at her lower lip, her bright eyes fixed on something only she could see.

Taking a deep breath, DeBryn started toward her with deliberately noisy steps – he had no wish to startle the poor girl with a sudden appearance. His slow, heavy tread found every patch of ice-clogged gravel on the longest of the short paths to her bench, and he cleared his throat industriously as he went. All these precautions were quite lost on her, however, and when he sat down beside the girl, she whirled round at him, eyes wide with alarm, her face becoming even whiter than the snow.

“Don’t worry – it’s all right, Miss Thursday. Nothing’s changed,” he said quickly, waving off the questions he didn’t want her to put into words. Though he was himself more than a little overwrought, he settled down beside her with an air of calm and composure – exaggerated calm and composure, for he meant for her to see it clearly. He picked a bit of fuzz off the knee of his trousers, and gave a deep, unhurried sigh. She took his hint: he could sense her tension coil and break, and though her face trembled, she managed to give him a fragile smile. “I’m sorry I ran out like that. I just needed some time to think. I – I hope you know…“

“I understand. It’s quite all right.”

There followed a long pause in which they both gazed out at the surrounding prospect of Oxford after an exceptionally unpromising dawn. There was a thick blanket of snow all around. The early morning light was so choked by clouds that it was barely able to peek over the rooftops. The stately gray beauty of the distant spires felt morose and charmless – as grubby as the cheap coal smoke that hung in a veil over the town, pumped out by students in parsimonious college quarters. There wasn’t a thing in sight to give one hope.

Like his companion, DeBryn instinctively hugged his arms for warmth. Still not quite knowing how to begin but knowing he must speak, he looked down at his shoes, performing as he did so the corresponding nudge of his glasses up the bridge of his nose. “That was difficult,” he managed at last.

Joan Thursday’s lips pressed firmly together. She nodded.

To say that their shared ordeal of the previous night had been “difficult” was an understatement. The word was in fact so absurdly inadequate that at a different moment, it might have struck DeBryn in a way that made him burst into laughter at his own feeble, stiff-upper-lip vocabulary. But as it was, Joan’s silent, rigid grief acted on him like a kind of anchor. It steadied him, focused his thoughts, reminded him that she could not be left to bear this burden alone.

“We’ve given him a fighting chance,” he said softly. “If I know Morse, that’s all he’ll need.”

Nodding mechanically, Joan continued to worry her lips with her fingertips. He wondered if she did it to hide the subtle trembling of her chin – the telltale buildup to a flood of tears, long overdue.

DeBryn took off his cardigan and carefully draped it over the girl’s shoulders. She blinked. “Oh – thank you…”

“It’s for the shock. Can’t have two patients in hospital at once, now can I? It would begin to look like carelessness.”

This earned him a breath of laughter, but then her wide blue irises turned glassy. Tears pooled, brightly shimmering, then slipped down her cheeks.

“There, there now,” he said, a hand on her back.

She gathered her composure, hiccoughing slightly. Her makeup had run a little, the kohl smudging the white linen of the handkerchief he had silently passed to her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just – that that I can’t stop thinking… When we found him…when – when I saw him like that…”

DeBryn swallowed hard. He too would be forever haunted by that bloody half hour’s work. They had struggled together to keep Morse alive: to stanch the bleeding, to hold him tight and keep him warm, to keep him from slipping silently away into the night. DeBryn looked down at his hands, still with hints of rust in the whorls of his fingers and in the lines of his palms. The echo was still there – the appalling feeling of a young body gone still, quiet, and unresisting beneath his hands, its life’s blood spilled too wantonly even for pain to spur into consciousness. He was a pathologist – not a doctor – for a reason.

Unsure whether it was for her benefit or his own, DeBryn reached for Joan’s cold little hand and squeezed it hard. “If I may say, Miss Thursday, I thought you were very brave. I’m sure that Morse would agree.”

Her voice was high and tight, a fraction from breaking. “You really think so?”

“Absolutely.”

She tried to smile, but it was a delicate thing. It wavered for a moment, then dissolved into a tremulous frown. “Oh – it’s all so wrong,” she breathed, and shook her head. “He doesn’t deserve this. Any of this.”

“I know,” he said quietly. “I know...”

She dashed away the tears that were rolling down her cheeks and turned to him. “Who could have done it?” she whispered.

“I’m sure the police will – ”

She gave a hiss of impatience. “Police,” she said bitterly.

“They’ll find whoever did it. Mr. Bright, your father, Jim Strange…”

“Who could have done it?” she demanded again. “Who could have done that to _him_?”

A headache was building behind DeBryn’s eyes, an accumulation of tiredness, tension, and deferred grief that caused him to grope lamely for the right words. “We know so little at the moment,” he said at last. “We don’t know what happened to him, or why. We don’t know what the next few days will bring, whether for good or for ill. But I feel certain, somehow, that Morse himself will lead us through it. After all,” he said, a small smile tugging sadly at his lips, “he always has.”

Joan looked very much struck by this speech. Her round blue eyes held his gaze for a moment, then looked away. She nodded her assent to what he had said, but for a long time afterward said nothing. Her face – always animated, always honest – grew distant and soft in its expression, the delicacy of brimming tears and quivering lips bringing her an exquisitely bittersweet kind of beauty. She seemed to be studying something in her own mind, examining it from every angle as one turns a gem in a ray of light, trying hard to see and to understand. “Doctor DeBryn?” she said at last, her voice very quiet. Her eyes were as wide and earnest as a child’s.

“Yes, Miss Thursday?”

“Can you keep a secret?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: to feel the vibrations on the string


	2. DeBryn

The small office attached to the mortuary only had room enough for a single occupant at a time, which was just as well. The mortuary wing of the Radcliffe Infirmary had a bleached atmosphere and a grim purpose that drove most humans to avoid it in the same unthinking, primal way that led cattle to buck at the smell of the slaughter yard. Max DeBryn, however, was quite contentedly eating a digestive biscuit with a strong cup of coffee at his desk, humming a turgid cello passage by Bach and feeling perfectly at home. He scanned the Oxford Mail’s morning edition. There was a screaming headline across the top: _Flurries Expected in Oxford Tuesday_. It was a dull day indeed with The Mail led with the weather.

There was a soft sound of uncertain footsteps. Pushing back in his rolling chair, DeBryn squinted to see a young constable standing on the threshold in his uniform blues. His shoulders were dusted with large soft snowflakes, and DeBryn’s critical gaze noted that his feet – overlarge, like a puppy not yet grown into his paws – were tracking sleety puddles through the lab. The young man’s eyes were swiveling around, coming to rest on the cirrhotic Oxfordshire publican lying dead beneath a white sheet. He swallowed hard.

“Snow’s started early, I see,” said DeBryn in wry amusement. “What can I help you with, Constable?”

The boy tore his gaze away from the morbid shape beneath the sheet, a little startled to find that he was being observed. “Oh. Are you the pathologist? Doctor DeBryn?”

With Cowley Station closed, and only a skeleton crew of officers still assigned to it, a rotating cast of green young constables from larger neighboring stations had taken on many of Oxford’s minor cases and procedural duties. This meant that there were a lot of new faces showing up at DeBryn’s door, each getting his first introduction to the charms of the mortuary. DeBryn raised his eyebrows at the boy. “Who else might I be, I ask you?”

“Well – uh, I have a message for you from Morse, sir.”

“Oh?”

DeBryn felt torn. His favorite days were those in which he got to root around like an attentive gardener, weeding out pathology from idiosyncrasy, weighing human organs with all the grunting approval of a planter measuring up fat gourds and juicy marrows. Yet the pathologist could not help but be intrigued by whatever mystery Morse might have dreamt up whilst sitting at his desk in the empty station, all alone with the motes of dust and nothing but his mind for company.

The doctor pressed his lips together demurely, carefully noncommittal. “And what does Cowley’s last remaining detective have to say for himself then?”

“He asked for you to pull the files on the Home Farms case, sir. Those men who died outside Godstow.”

DeBryn had not for a moment expected that he would be able to anticipate Morse’s request, but still he was surprised. “Godstow? Does he mean that barn fire?”

“Don’t know, sir. But he said it was some sort of horse farm. Says they came under your knife last summer.”

DeBryn thought back. There had been a barn fire at a stud farm in rural Oxfordshire the previous August. Four men had burned to death, apparently in a futile attempt to rescue some valuable horses. Mr. Bright had assigned Morse to the case and the detective sergeant, with sneering lip, had been forced out into the heated fields of summer, full of midges and cowpats in equal measure. He had driven back with the mortuary van several hours later – but come no farther. The smell of the burnt bodies had been difficult even for the shockproof pathologist to stomach, and so DeBryn had taken pity on Morse’s ashen complexion and sweat-dappled skin and excused him from the post-mortems.

What could Morse be having second thoughts about now?

The constable with the childish face broke in on DeBryn’s thoughts: “Morse also said that he’ll come by to discuss it with you later, sir, and that you should keep the files in a safe place meantime.”

“‘A safe place’? What did he mean by that?”

The constable shrugged.

“Was Inspector Thursday with him? Sergeant Strange?”

The constable shook his head. “I’ve not seen them around Cowley this week, sir. I heard they were called up to London. For court, sir.”

“I see,” said DeBryn, frowning a little. “And Morse didn’t give any indication what’s on his mind?”

“No, sir.”

DeBryn snorted.

“They told me all about Morse back in Hendon, sir,” said the constable, crossing his arms and making himself comfortable against the doorframe. “I heard he was up at Oxford. College boy. Too clever for his own good, they say. This must be one of Morse’s larks, don’t you think, sir?”

“That’s Detective Sergeant Morse to you, Constable. That will be all.”

The words had been as sharp as a sudden rap across the knuckles. The boy blinked, stung. “Don’t have to tell me twice,” he mumbled. As he slumped away his tender young face glanced back reproachfully, but DeBryn was not sorry for it. Even if the local constabulary would never learn to recognize or respect the most gifted detective in their midst, DeBryn still wasn’t about to join them in treating him like an inside joke. DeBryn – himself an outsider, an oddity snickered at behind his back – had never had any desire to ingratiate himself into the pack in such a way.

He went to the file cabinet and dutifully pulled the records on the four victims of the fire. He cast an eye over them, lips pursing. However unpleasant, his conclusions of last summer were straightforward and still perfectly sound. Burns or smoke inhalation – or some supremely disagreeable combination of the two – had clearly caused all four deaths. There was no mystery here. He put the files in his medical bag and closed it with a snap.

DeBryn looked forward to Morse slouching into the lab and assuming his usual pose: tugging fretfully at his earlobe, lip curling at the merest whiff of formaldehyde, his face turned obliquely away from whatever squelchy horror the pathologist might be working on.

But no Morse ever appeared.

Around five o’clock, the pathologist took his medical bag and went in search of his tea. There was a powdering of snow on the ground and a fresh, expectant scent in the air as DeBryn stopped at the Head of the River. It was a rambling old pub that crowded the edge of the Thames, regular customers moored within and rowboats moored without. The publican had put up Christmas greenery and a string of gold garland, which all reflected rather merrily in the mirror above the bar back with its colored liquor bottles. DeBryn anchored himself at the long, darkly shining mahogany bar, contented as any Englishman to find himself once again safely ensconced in the friendly confines of an old pub’s darkened timbers, imbibing the scents of Murphy’s oil soap, fried potato, and stale ale.

He was about halfway through his ploughman’s plate and pint of bitter when a large handbag was slung onto the bar beside him with a thud. A middle-aged woman with wavy brown hair and a sly, handsome face sat down next to him with a smile. “And how’s our mutual friend?” she said, entirely without preamble.

“Our what?” said DeBryn, startled out of his cozy foraging.  
Miss Frazil made a friendly gesture at the bartender by way of a drink order before turning her full attention to DeBryn. “Our mutual friend. Thames Valley’s prickly young prodigy.”

“Ah, Miss Frazil,” said the doctor, blinking. “Afraid I couldn’t say. Haven’t seen him.”

“Nothing on, I suppose?”

“Are you looking for a story? I’m afraid it’s been a quiet month since Cowley closed.”

“Same here, alas. The snowstorm is easily our biggest story, and the latest forecast says we’ve botched it. Turns out it’ll be a blizzard by Oxford standards. So get thee gone before you find yourself stranded here, Doctor.”

The bartender arrived with the journalist’s scotch. “To Constable Fancy,” she said, saluting with her glass.

DeBryn lifted his stout. “To young George, _whom I shall not see; till all my widow’d race be run _."__

They both drank, and DeBryn let go of a slow sigh. He realized after a moment that Miss Frazil was in the midst of giving him a long look of appraisal, quite comfortable with the brazenness of her scrutiny. At last she seemed to make up her mind about him, and confessed: “You know, I had been hoping to find Morse here tonight. Something very interesting fell into my lap this morning.”

“Oh? Animal, vegetable, or criminal?”

She smirked. “Criminal, as it happens. And better yet, a puzzle.”

“Christmas morning for prickly young prodigies, what.”

“One would think. Only I haven’t managed to run him to earth. After trying just about every pub in town, I seem to have turned up only a Home Office pathologist.”

“Much less useful than a tame detective, unfortunately.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” she said, and stole a piece of bread from his ploughman’s plate.

“Well,” said DeBryn. “I’m afraid I’m no help to you.”

“You don’t know where I might find him, then?”

“I imagine you’ve rung Kidlington? They’re running the show now.”

“Of course. Even walked over to Cowley, but the skeleton crew over there hadn’t seen him since this morning. Said he was there early – just after dawn as the night shift was coming in – then he seems to have gone out around seven and not been seen since. I’ve rung him at home too, but no luck. Jim Strange wasn’t at home either. I don’t suppose they’re with Inspector Thursday?”

Remembering his conversation with the young constable that morning, DeBryn frowned as he knitted that young man’s gossip together with a bit of news he’d heard earlier in the week. “Inspector Thursday and Sergeant Strange went up to London. Won’t be back until sometime late tonight – if what you say about the snow is correct, perhaps even tomorrow. Queen’s Counsel is finally, at long last, deposing witnesses in the Matthews case, trying to make criminal conspiracy and racketeering charges stick in addition to the murder charge. They’ve got police and witnesses from all over the country up in London to testify.”

“Ah,” said Miss Frazil.

The memory of the Wessex Bank heist caused them both to fall silent for a moment. Miss Frazil fetched a packet of rolling papers out of her pocket, then a tin of tobacco, and set them on the bar in front of her, at last saying consideringly: “Morse didn’t go with them? That’s a bit odd, isn’t it? He was an eyewitness to the robbery after all. Oh, you needn’t look at me like that, Doctor. I’m off the clock.”

“Are reporters ever really off the clock?”

“Are doctors?” She smiled.

DeBryn pursed his lips and took a prim sip of his pint. A short stalemate ensued. With a small smile playing at her lips, Miss Frazil rolled herself a cigarette with practiced fingers. She didn’t look up at him as she did so, instead letting the silence play out as it would.

At last, his chin defiant, DeBryn said: “As I understand it…Morse was up in London last week. Already had his turn in the QC’s thumbscrews.”

“Oh?” she said, and waited for him to say more. When he did not, she rather generously passed over it with a careless: “So that’s all sorted, then.”

“All sorted,” he agreed.

The truth was something else all together. After many grueling hours of forcing Morse to relive every moment of the bank raid, the QC had deemed the young detective too much of a liability to take the stand as a witness. Too hostile – too combative, the QC had said. _Too emotional_ , had been the subtext. DeBryn could easily imagine Morse’s prickly demeanor – his defensiveness, his recalcitrance. He was sure the young detective must have looked altogether like a cornered dog trying to lick a wounded paw. 

“How’s he doing?” said Miss Frazil, seeming to intuit DeBryn’s train of thought. “I haven’t seen him since the funeral…”

“Nor I, I’m afraid.”

She nodded and looked into her glass. “If you see him, let him know that I’m looking for him, will you? Lord knows I’d bother him just to be a bother, but this is honest-to-God important.”

“As it happens,” said DeBryn. “I’ve good reason to want a chat with him myself. I’ll give him the message when he turns up.” He paused a moment, then added: “You know, of course, that Thames Valley has more than one policeman…”

Miss Frazil gave him a tight smile. “Not for this.”

Not long after the reporter made her exit, the doctor made his own. Enjoying the feel of the cold air against his alcohol-warmed cheeks, he decided to take the long way back to the mortuary along the Isis. He passed canvas-draped rowboats and punts, walked under the bare branches of Poplar Walk, and along the long somber silent edge of Christ Church Meadow. The hush was total and complete; the smell of snow was ripening in the air, and there was an expectant, dreamlike feel, as if the world were full of eerie potential. “ _Feathered dark in thought, I stalk like a rook, brooding as the winter night comes on_ ,” he quoted in an undertone.

He did not like the convergence of events that was piling up: Thursday’s absence from Oxford, the cryptic message from Morse sent by constable that morning, Miss Frazil’s hints at criminal doings. It was usually Morse who felt the vibrations on the string before anyone else had the notion of a tremor, but tonight, as DeBryn arrived back at the mortuary, he fancied it did not take a prickly young prodigy to hear the deep note of alarm begin to thrum.

As he stood on the threshold, he looked around his workspace and his eyes narrowed. It felt as if there were a disturbance in the bleached air – as if someone had recently passed through, their presence somehow still churning in their wake. He went into his office and his suspicions were immediately confirmed by the blizzard of white paper, manila folders, green mimeographs scattered all over the floor. The file cabinet had been ransacked. The contents of his desk and files had been strewn around the room.

“Keep the files in a safe place, indeed,” he said to himself slowly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: A pair of crows in a snowy field


	3. Professor Blair

As a young academic, Professor Viola Blair had favored the styles of her peers: finger waves and Kirby pins beneath her mortarboard, t-strap shoes, and skirts that danced on the edge of propriety. But as she advanced inevitably into later middle age, she began to neglect the styles of the day. She wore voluminous shawls chosen for warmth and eccentric hats chosen by whim. She forgot to take her washing in from the line until two days later, when it had scattered across the lawn and all her socks were stuck to the hedges. But turning into the stereotype of an absent-minded professor had amused her more than anything – the cliché of an early modern poetry lecturer living more with poets, privateers, and princes than with the real world turned out to have a diverting amount of truth to it.

The professor lived on a farm several miles outside of Oxford, close to the village of Godstow. The farm and cottage had passed to her, the only surviving child, from her parents some five years previously, and since that time she had abandoned her academic digs in town and gone to live in the country. The horses appreciated the exponential increase in close attention: treats of apples, carrots, and luxuriously unhurried brushings-down with a stiff brush. The professor, in turn, enjoyed an increase in the number of mornings in which the only sounds that interrupted her thoughts about Aphra Behn’s poetic personas were the snorts of contented mares.

On this particular day – a harsh and unforgiving early December morning, with perilous ice crunching beneath the feet in a way that jolly old Advent was not famed for – she was mucking stalls in the barn, then emptying the buckets in the fallow kitchen garden beyond. After several uneventful such trips, she turned the corner and came to a stop.

A black car was parked along the lane, its long sleek body mostly hidden by the hedgerow, a thin ribbon of steam emitting faintly from the idling engine. This was odd; Godstow was a modest hamlet and not much of a magnet for tourists or city-folk, and this car was clearly no country flivver or farm vehicle. Professor Blair looked around for her dog, but he was nowhere to be seen – probably dozing by the fire rather than barking at intruders as he was supposed to do. “Lazy sod,” she muttered under her breath.

She heard an angular voice and turned. There were two dark figures standing in the paddock by the granary. Both had the sharp air of the city about them. Their tailored black coats cut exotic silhouettes against the weather-beaten landscape like a pair of crows in a snowy field. 

“Can I help you?” she called out.

One of the men turned. “Oh hullo, love,” he said, plainly taking her for an old bitty. “Do you live here? Is your husband about?”

Professor Blair set her muck buckets down and elaborately wiped off her hands on her woolly, dust-powdered jumper. “It’s _my_ property you’re trespassing on, young man. What’s your business here?”

The man was dressed in imitation of the hatless youths she’d seen around town these days – black suit with skinny tie and hair slicked back: greasy and vaguely unwholesome. But close up, he was older and harder than she first supposed, a man of fifty or so years, and she took him for some kind of salesman. To her surprise, he took out a wallet containing a policeman’s warrant card. “Police business,” he said, flashing it at her. “We’ve wandered a bit off-course. We’re not really country-folk as you can see.” He gave a self-deprecating roll of his shoulders.

Professor Blair’s sharp eyes glanced from the first man to the younger, brawnier one beyond. He had the look of a former boxer, heavy but with an able physicality. His acne-scarred face was stoic, and the flatness of his nose suggested it had been broken at least twice in his life. It was true that neither man was of a country stamp, but they still made a strangely mismatched pair, like a rat terrier and a Rottweiler.

“We’re here about the neighboring property,” said the slick policeman. “That place that burned down a while back.”

“Home Farms?” she said, immediately concerned. “But I thought they ruled that an accident?”

“We’re just here to do the mopping up,” he said, with a bland smile. “I don’t suppose you saw anything when it burned down? Nothing you want to tell us?”

Professor Blair’s eyes were unconsciously drawn to the horizon where her land shared a boundary with the now-defunct stud. She remembered that morning: the column of ferocious black smoke still billowing against the tender morning sky. “I had been away for much of that spring and summer,” she said. “When I arrived home it happened to be the morning after the fire, I saw the smoke and knew right away what had happened.” Her voice grew a little hoarse: “Terrible thing. Just terrible.”

He scratched his cheek. “You sure you didn’t see anything more?”

She was taken aback by his coldness. “Quite sure,” she said.

“What about around that time, generally? Did you see anything out of the ordinary? Any people who shouldn’t have been here, any unusual cars, that sort of thing?” He looked at her with benign expectancy, as if waiting for her to offer him some inevitable bit of information.

“Well, as I just told you and as I told the police at the time,” she said, a little pointedly, “I boarded my horses and went abroad for much of Hilary term and the long vac. But I’m sure Cormac would have written to tell me of any strange behavior around my property. He was a very astute and considerate young man. Kept an eye on things.”

“Cormac…?”

“Cormac Brennan. One of the boys from Home Farms. He died in that fire, poor child.”

“Oh yes. Brennan. Of course.”

There was a silence in which Professor Blair reflected that it didn’t say much for this man’s detective skills if he couldn’t even remember the name of one of the victims. She recalled Cormac – a tall, gangly young man with straw-colored hair and a quick, shy smile – and the carelessness of it grieved her.

The professor’s elderly sheepdog Raleigh now strolled onto the scene, forgetting to bark as he wandered up to greet the strangers with a lazy wag of his tail. The brawny policeman knelt down and patted the dog’s matted coat as his companion went on: “Did you know much about the Home Farm boys? Where they hailed from, anything like that?”

“Well, they were all Irishmen of course. Cormac was Dublin-born. The rest were country-bred, I believe, from somewhere in the west, but I’m afraid I couldn’t tell you more than that.”

“You don’t know where Cormac’s family could be reached, do you?”

She shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I think his father had died when he was young. It might just be his mother now, but I couldn’t tell you where exactly she lives.” An alarming thought occurred to her: “Oh _don’t_ tell me you haven’t notified her yet?”

“Everything has been done properly, I assure you, ma’am.”

“Has it?” she pressed.

“Certainly, ma’am.”

“Well, then. I place all my faith in the Thames Valley constabulary.”

If they noticed the acid in her tone, they did not show it. In fact, they seemed in no hurry to move on, as if still waiting for her to volunteer some inevitable piece of information. The brawny policeman was playing rather more roughly with Raleigh than the professor liked to see. “He’s an old dog, you should take care,” she said, adding untruthfully: “He might bite.”

“Was Cormac friendly with anyone else in this neighborhood?” asked the older policeman. “Anyone he might have confided in or left something with?”

Prof. Blair frowned. “That’s a strange question. What do you mean by it?”

“Just a line of inquiry, ma’am.”

“Cormac was good to _everyone_. The country-folk around here were not welcoming to the Irish boys, but it made no matter to them. They were good lads. All of them. I hope you remember that as you do your ‘mopping up’ or whatever it is you’re really doing. If there’s nothing else, gentlemen, I really do have some chores to attend to as you can see.” She gestured at the bucket of manure she’d been carrying. “You’d best leave. Your car is that way, I suggest you go now.”

This blunt prompt was still met with no response. The indifference to her wishes was escalating quickly from rudeness to something rather more aggressive.

“What did you say your names were?” she said, eyes narrowing.

This caused the brawny man to snort – the first noise he had uttered during the entire exchange. “I’m Smith,” he said. He cocked his head toward his companion. “He’s Jones.”

A prickle of alarm ran up the back of the professor’s neck. She watched with a surreal, sick feeling as the large man put his hands around her dog’s throat and squeezed hard enough for the dog to give a confused whimper. The man looked up at Professor Blair, a grotesque grin spreading across his crude features.

“Come here, Raleigh,” she shouted, clapping her hands frantically. “Here!”

The man let go, chuckling as the dog ran back to his owner. The pair then walked away without another word to Professor Blair, climbing the turnstile over the hedgerow and arriving at their car just as the driver rolled down the window and flicked out a cigarette stub. The car drove away slowly, unhurried, down the narrow lane and out of sight.

Professor Blair watched them go. She was shaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: With gratitude for your trust and friendship


	4. Miss Frazil

It was twenty minutes past six o’clock when the late train pulled into Oxford Station. With the deep purple-gray of a snow-laden sky as its backdrop, the train’s hulking black shape dragged itself along the platform slowly, and then, as if exhausted by its day’s exertions, let out a long exhalation of steam. A moment later the doors of the passenger carriages opened one after another, and a small group of weary travelers disembarked: a young mother carrying a sleeping child, a pair of elderly dons returning to college, a student looking sleepy and disheveled. Miss Frazil waited, checking her watch.

Finally the last passenger emerged. He was a man of about her own age, smartly dressed and well shod, but she was not above noting that he looked rather more road-worn and hardened than she. He was a large man with thick, wiry salt-and-pepper curls, and when he caught sight of her his cold blue eyes flashed with mischief.

“Ahh, Dee,” he said, coming toward her and kissing her cheek. “It’s been entirely too long.”

“Not since Peter Harding’s retirement do last year, I think. You know, I realized the other day that it’s been nearly twenty years since Korea. How did that happen?”

Iain Ewell cursed under his breath and rubbed at one eye. “Time flies when you’re not having any fun whatsoever, I suppose.”

They both chuckled. She led him to the station’s café, which was little more than a coffee stand and a wobbly table with two bentwood café chairs, the concrete floor stained with chewing gum and grease. She bought them each a paper cup of wretched coffee and settled down to ask after his colleagues at The London Daily Star. But Ewell had always been a preemptory sort, his movements sudden and decided. Before Miss Frazil could waste any time on preamble, he had pulled out his briefcase and removed a thick manila envelope covered in postmarks. He shucked it of its contents and displayed the pages on the table like a poker player laying down a royal flush.

“Have at it. Though I notice you didn’t bring your copper to look them over like you said you would. One of your mistakes, was he? Run off like the rest of them?”

She twisted her lips as if she’d just been surprised by something sour. “Hmm. Still stirring the pot just to see what turns up, I see.”

“Beats small talk.”

“You’ve spilled coffee on your tie,” she pointed out, happy to discomfit him. She took up the sheaf of papers as he blotted his tie with cheap paper napkins. “Mimeographs. Not the originals,” she pointed out. “You’ve made copies.”

He grunted acknowledgement.

“Whose memo is this? It’s been heavily redacted,” she said, looking up at him sharply. “Is this - ?”

“From Special Branch? Oh, I’d say so.”

Ewell’s phone call that morning had been cryptic, only the scantest details offered, but the story sounded as juicy as a prize plum. Miss Frazil scanned the documents quickly, eager to get the gist of the tale straight from the source.

There had been a prison break at Her Majesty’s Royal Prison Petworth on the south side of the Thames the previous winter. The inmates were still – embarrassingly – at large in the countryside a year later. Fearing public outrage, Special Branch believed that Thames Valley CID meant to bury the story and wash their hands of it.

“God, this is damning,” she said, shaking her head in amazement as she turned a page. “I remember the prison break – we picked it off the wires and re-ran it in The Mail last December, but the authorities said the prisoners were recovered, I thought?”

“Part of the official hush-up, it would seem.”

“You’ve got quite a story here, Iain. Award-worthy if you play it right.”

“Don’t I know it?”

She glanced at his lounging, self-satisfied pose and frowned a little. He was not a generous man; there was no way he would share credit on a story like this without being sure of getting something useful to himself in return, making his request to discuss the documents all the more puzzling. She continued to pore over the memo in front of her, reading aloud: “‘Local institutions have already shown indications of cooperation with these criminal elements, perhaps after having fallen prey to a protection racket or blackmailing scheme.’ The next page is almost entirely redacted, very disobligingly not telling us which institutions those might be. Iain,” she said, almost gleeful at the prospect: “Imagine finding a gangster hiding out in Tom Tower?”

“I’d love to see your headline on that one.” He smiled.

“The date on this memo has it written several months ago. I wonder how far their operation might have expanded since it was written. Can you imagine?”

“Of course I can, and what’s more so can you. You can’t have spent the past decade in this academic idyll without seeing that all the dirty-dealing and corruption of London touches even a place like dreaming, idealistic Oxford.”

"Iain,” she said, with mordant timing, “you have no idea.”

“Petworth is a high security prison, takes in the worst of the worst. If those escapees aren’t London gangsters, I’d be very much surprised. The London mob has more politicians and vicars and maiden aunts in their pockets than anyone would believe. This _stinks_ of that mob to me.”

She looked at him shrewdly. “How in the world did you come by this memo?”

“Nothing illegal, if that’s what you’re asking. Come now, Dee.”

“You forget I know you of old.”

He chuckled. “Oh, I’m pure as the day is long – in this particular case at least. Someone sent it to me by post. It has an Oxford postmark – see for yourself – the post office right on the Broad, as it happens. Imagine rubbing elbows with tourists sending postcards to granny as you slip that into the post, calm as you please?”

“Are you here to track down your source, then?”

“Oh, I’m not going to waste my time. I have little hope of finding whoever sent me that envelope,” he said, and leaned back in his chair with arms crossed.

To Miss Frazil, he seemed to be maddeningly callous about the risks his source had taken in sending him his prize. “Do you want my help tracking him down?” she pressed.

“Do you really have those kinds of contacts?” said Ewell, smiling. “Isn’t your beat academic fetes and student prizes these days? My source sent this to me rather than The Oxford Mail for a reason.”

“There are certainly people I could talk to who would – ”

He chuckled.

“This is Oxford, Iain, not the ragged end of no where.”

“I’m sure, I’m sure...” he said soothingly.

“I have a friend at Thames Valley CID who knows his way around the University.”

“Your pet copper? Are you sure he isn’t as knee-deep in this cover up as the rest of them? Why _didn’t_ he come with you tonight?”

“I couldn’t find him,” she said frankly.

“Busy with the job, was he? Oxford’s just chock full of villains to catch, is it?”

“My prodigy is not an easy one to pin down,” she said, steadfastly refusing to be provoked. “Besides, I’m rather glad I didn’t waste his time.”

“Waste his time?”

“You still haven’t made this conversation worth our while.”

Miss Frazil was glad to see she had succeeded in needling him. The big city reporter had wanted to overawe her, but she had managed to sit him back in his chair, frowning, arms crossed. “You’re a fascinating and complicated woman, Dee. Did I ever tell you that?”

“As I recall, you certainly tried to.”

“Hmmm.” There was another pause. “Well,” he said.

“Oh, when’s the penny going to drop?” she said, almost laughing at him now. “We’ve known each other so long, you can’t really think you can handle me like one of your sources, can you? It’s obvious you still want something from me and you’re just dancing around to see if I’ll volunteer it without you needing to show your hand. Go on, then. What haven’t you told me yet? What do you _want_?”

He smiled not entirely pleasantly. “You always did have a nose for the brass tacks. A newswoman, first and foremost.”

“Had you forgot that?”

A tense moment passed. Then he reached into the manila envelope to produce one last sheaf of paper. He held it up, still not quite handing it over. “No one at the paper could make heads or tails of this. But it’s addressed to you, Dorothea.”

“To me?” 

“No idea who could have sent it, then?” He was still withholding the document. 

“Not yet,” she said, and smiled a smile of pure ice as she snatched it out of his hand.

The sheaf of papers looked, ostensibly, like a long, ordinary typewritten letter on white stationery paper. There was a printed bar of music across the top: a series of notes on a treble clef. It looked like the kind of correspondence paper that was sold in any of the unremarkable stationers’ shops around Oxford.

It followed the form of a typical business letter, with address, date, and greeting all as one would expect. The rest of the letter, however, was far from ordinary:

_December 20, 1968_

_Miss Dorothea Frazil_

_Editor_

_Oxford Mail_

_Dear Miss Frazil:_

_door wednEsday dog please green marble Blue four Jacob said cheer give couLdn’t elephant quickly me Leave or wanted four luminous witHout didn’t sending angelic To when this needed Fifty apples message triangles how constitutionally threw statue end dotage a tulip Wainwright typewriter rival on aM proTected But shielded right uNable I’m bright righteous red concerned two september January that deAd share epIc you’re professor through with safety had and finAlity wood Thursday friday brutal bee could as constance dangerously iRrevocably inCite him compromised about modality I’m if Often generally Glut the afraid ilk consequential intelligence thursday he haven’t were like asked is not from Brown knot shared in pilgrImage trust aye wouldn’t dAnger once risk three donkey end ewe monTh spectacular rather or crepuscular Knowledge cantle my risk shiver_

It went on like this for four more pages. Random words: nouns, names, adjectives, numbers, participles, various tenses, everything you could need for a proper letter and yet not a lick of sense or coherence about it. It was as if someone had opened a whole row of books to random pages and typed the first word they had seen. Miss Frazil was just as bewildered as Ewell – until she reached the stunningly comprehensible sign off of the letter:

_with gratitude for your trust and friendship,_

_snappy_

Ewell put down his coffee cup. “What? Can you make something of it? What’s wrong?”

Dorothea Frazil’s face had drained of all colour. She was staring at the parting words with an extraordinary look of alarm and confusion. “When did you say you received this?” she said at last, softly.

“Last night. Sent express service. Postmarked from Oxford yesterday afternoon. Why? Do you know who sent it?”

Without answering, she started to put the letter in her purse.

“Wait, wait, wait, you can’t – “

“You’ve made copies,” she said sharply. “And this is addressed to me, remember.”

“Dee, this is _my_ story. You can’t just – _oh – God damn it_ ,” he added gruffly. She had pulled away from his grasping hand and knocked over the coffee, spilling it into his lap. He swatted at the hot spill, still trying to call after her to stop: “Dee! Dorothea! Wait!”

She rushed out of the train station into the winter’s night. The snow had begun in earnest – several inches had piled up during her meeting with Ewell. With clouds of her warm breath puffing in the air, she ran to the taxi stand, where one lonely taxi was idling. She ripped open the door and got in. “Cowley Station, quick as you can.”

“I’ll try, miss, but the snow’s making the roads awful bad – “

“Just drive. Drive, damn it,” she said, hitting the glass divider emphatically with the palm of her hand. Startled, the driver yanked the clutch and the cab lurched into motion.

She took the letter out of her purse and pored over it again, trying to force the nonsense words to make sense. The parting adieu frightened her – _with gratitude for your trust and friendship_.

It seemed like a goodbye.

Looking back later, that journey always had the slow, disconnected feeling of a fever dream. The tyres slushed slowly along the cobbles and the windscreen wipers squealed as they worked to beat back the ever-increasing tide of snow. Carfax Tower loomed up darkly on the High, then they turned into St. Aldates in time to hear Great Tom toll seven long, mournful notes as they puttered on toward Magdalen Bridge.

When they at last reached Cowley, Miss Frazil shoved a fistful of coins at the driver and rushed up the sleety steps. The building was quiet. The defunct station now hosted only its nightly skeleton crew, which was comprised tonight of a Welsh duty sergeant and a uniformed police constable. The constable was meant to be out on the beat but, seeking refuge from the weather, he was instead leaning into the light of the sergeant’s green-shaded desk lamp, entertaining the old man with a bawdy story that had them both sniggering.

The reporter’s heels echoed harshly on the tile, catching their attention. The duty sergeant raised a smile. Miss Frazil had often bribed him with a free pint in exchange for harmless favors and idle gossip over the years, and he greeted her cheerfully: “Back again, Miss Frazil? I’ve still not seen Morse, if that’s what you’re going to ask.”

“Listen, Davey, I’ve got to find him - ”

“Don’t worry yourself, Miss Frazil,” said the sergeant, shaking his ponderous gray head. “I’m sure he’ll turn up in his own good time.”

“Like a cat that always finds his way home in time for supper, is Morse,” chimed in the constable.

“Has he left a number?” she said. “Anything that might tell you where he is?”

The sergeant pursed his lips and looked at his notepad, running a finger down the bullet-points of chicken-scratch and shaking his head dolefully. “Bad habit. I know the Guv’nor’s tried to break him of it but - ”

“DI Thursday, then,” she said impatiently. “Will you ring Thursday for me?”

“He’s in London with Sergeant Strange. Rung up to say they’re staying overnight because of the snowstorm - ”

“I need you to ring through to him anyway. On the police telephone exchange. If you can’t get Thursday, get Bright on the phone.”

The sergeant and the constable exchanged startled glances.

“Davey, I’m telling you Morse is in trouble.”

Her words were still hanging in the air as the phone began to ring. The duty sergeant held up a finger to make her wait, then picked up the receiver. “Cowley Station.” His face went through several evolutions of dismay as he listened. “Right,” he said gruffly. “I understand. Yes. Yes. Do you mean…? Good God, the Guv’nor will – ” He broke off, then quickly: “Yes, yes. Of course, right away.” He hung up the phone, and turned solemnly to the constable: “You’d best go round Mr. Bright’s and fetch him here, lad.”

“What is it?” cried Miss Frazil, the answer already clutching at her heart.

“That was Doctor DeBryn,” said the duty sergeant. “Detective Sergeant Morse has been found.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the damage done


	5. Thursday

Two police constables were posted outside the entrance to the Radcliffe Infirmary. Mr. Bright must have stationed them there, but at that moment they were nothing at all to Detective Inspector Fred Thursday: just anonymous uniforms, pieces of architecture in navy blue. The uniforms, for their part, recognized the Inspector in an instant, and their posture straightened as they watched him approach.

“Sir,” said one, nodding a somber greeting.

There was no reply. Not even so much as a glance of recognition. The constables watched the man in the fedora as he strode past them into the lobby of the hospital, his hands jammed into his long coat’s pockets, his hat pulled low over a face like thunder.

One constable whistled quietly under his breath. “Blimey.”

“Whoever did it won’t live to see the sun rise,” said the other.

They knew – _everyone_ knew – how the Old Man felt about his detective sergeant.

The intensive care ward of the Radcliffe was a large white tiled room that smelled strongly of clean linen and carbolic soap. Patients slept in each of the neat narrow beds that lined the walls. The gentle swoon of a Christmas choral arrangement played on a record player at very low volume, which seemed to be mostly for the benefit of the nurse at the duty station. She was a neat, gray-haired woman with tired eyes and a steaming cup of tea clutched in her hands. She rose as Thursday approached, clearly expecting him.

“You must be Detective Inspector Thursday. I’m Sister Mary. I’m afraid I have to - ” She paused, something about Thursday’s face causing her to put out a hand and gently touch his arm. “It’s all right, sir. I don’t have bad news for you. I’m just to tell you that the doctor says I can only give you a few minutes. I’ve been ordered to be quite strict with his visitors.” She smiled kindly. “Endeavour is your sergeant, is he?”

“Morse,” he said, his voice rough. “He goes by Morse.”

“We’re doing our best for him, Inspector.”

“Thank you, Sister. I know you are.” Thursday’s gaze turned with apprehension to the sleeping figures in the beds. “Where…?”

“Your boy’s not here,” she said gently. “Let me take you to him.”

He followed her past all the beds into a dimly lit private wing beyond. Their footsteps along the scuffed linoleum were whisper-soft, the whole air of the place having a sleeping hush. The nurse led him to a private room, where there was a window overlooking the hospital’s car park. At this early morning hour it was nothing but a black mirror, showing the ghostly reflections of the nurse, all dressed in white, and Thursday, more dimly, in his tweeds behind her. It was in this black mirror that Thursday first saw that there was already a visitor in this room, a bespectacled man standing vigil with a clipboard hugged to his argyle chest.

“Five minutes, gentlemen,” said the nurse quietly as she closed the door behind herself. “Just five minutes.” 

Rather than greet Thursday, Max DeBryn wordlessly turned his back to him, discreetly giving him a moment alone to grapple with the sight of his detective sergeant.

The moment was very much needed.

Morse was lying in the hospital bed, blankets tucked up loosely around him, clearly in a state of profound unconsciousness. A thick plastic tube was strapped into place in his mouth and down his throat, attached to a ventilator machine beside the bed that produced a soft pneumatic whirring as his thin chest gently rose and fell.

“Ah God…” said Thursday thickly. “How – how bad? DeBryn…?”

The pathologist turned, nudging his glasses up the bridge of his nose as he looked solemnly down at Morse. “Impossible to say just yet. But I’m afraid… I’m afraid it’s very serious.”

For a moment the whole world seemed to be heaving at an angle. Thursday dragged the back of his hand across his mouth, feeling as if a great swell of seasickness had risen up inside him. DeBryn reached out – a gesture half steadying, half consoling – but Thursday waved him off. He took several deep breaths, then moved heavily toward Morse’s bedside and stood there, swallowing hard, forcing himself to face the damage done. 

The boy was a mess. Thursday’s reeling senses could barely absorb what he was seeing. There was a bewildering range of bruises, sutures, intravenous lines, swaths of bandages. His overwhelmed gaze settled on Morse’s face, on the right eye that had been entirely bandaged over. The dressing hid whatever injury was there from view, but purple-black bruises seeped damningly from under the white gauze and spread over the cheekbone, spoiling the pale skin like paint mixed into wholesome milk.

Even in fullest health, Morse always had the look of an overgrown schoolboy about him – painfully skinny, underfed, all angles and gawky movements. It was only that fearless scrutiny of his, those eyes – that snarling intellect – that made him such a force. But those eyes were closed now, that intellect extinguished. Only the vulnerable boy remained.

With a shaking hand, Thursday reached out and laid a palm very gently on Morse’s forehead. The boy’s auburn hair was damp to the touch, and Thursday realized with a pang that the nurses must have bathed him, carefully washing away all the blood and grime from his ordeal. They had neatly combed back his hair from his pale brow, taking more care with the helpless Morse than Morse ever did with himself.

Thursday felt the prickling heat of tears forming in his eyes and knew he had to get himself back on solid ground somehow. He took off his hat and squashed it into the depths of his coat pocket, clearing his throat. “His eye… Has he…?” Thursday gestured helplessly.

“No, no. He hasn’t lost it.”

Thursday nodded, grateful, but struggling mightily with the lump in his throat. “They – they told me it was a beating…” he said thickly.

“Yes,” said DeBryn softly. “A vicious one.”

Thursday closed his eyes and let go of a shaky breath. “What’s the worst of it?”

“There were internal injuries. His surgeon is with Mr. Bright now, explaining the results of the operation.”

“Which were?”

The doctor exhaled slowly. “The damage was…extensive,” he said quietly at last. “It took all the surgeon’s cleverness to save the kidney. He was not able to save the spleen.”

“DeBryn… Will he live?”

“Morse almost died on the table, Fred. It was a very near thing. He’s lost a great deal of blood, and the dangers of complication and infection are very real. I’m afraid it’s going to take some time for the prognosis to become clear.”

Thursday nodded vaguely, overwhelmed.

“He’s getting the best possible care, Fred,” said DeBryn earnestly. “I promise you that.”

Thursday gripped the bedrail until his knuckles whitened, trying to suppress the dangerous crosscurrent of emotions rising in his chest. He focused on the gentle rush and retreat of the young man’s ventilator-assisted breathing, on the rise and fall of his bruised and bandaged chest. The nurses had covered him with warm fleece blankets tucked up loosely around his slim body, yet he still looked cold lying there against the white sheets. His lips – slightly parted to admit the respirator tube – were a delicate, hypothermic shade of blue.

Every detail felt like a rebuke, every wound an indictment. Thursday’s eyes punished him with a careful catalog of each and every hurt: the broken right arm, the dark bracelets of bruising around the wrists, the long fingers splinted together. But it was the sight of an innocent constellation of freckles – scattered, poignant and somehow childlike – across Morse’s bare shoulder that filled Thursday with a surge of scalding, unbearable emotion. This extraordinary young man had been entrusted to his care. He was meant to protect him. He was supposed to shepherd him away from the darkness, and he had failed. He had failed.

“Tell me what you know, DeBryn,” said Thursday, his voice low and strangled.

The pathologist was still hugging Morse’s chart to his chest. His bespectacled eyes were somber and, perhaps, a little wary.

“He was handcuffed. I see the bruises,” growled the detective, and his voice suddenly rose: “ _What else_?”

There was a ringing silence. 

“This is your job, isn’t it?” demanded the detective.

The doctor looked pained. “Fred…”

A small muscle twitched electrically in Fred Thursday’s cheek, raising his lip like a snarl. “You need to tell me, Doctor. _All of it_. How many assailants were involved, how we can identify them, what they did to him, how long was Morse – was he…” He sucked in a ragged breath. His anger slipped off the knife’s edge, and his face trembled.

The door opened. The nurse had returned. Just visible behind her in the hallway was the small neat figure of Mr. Bright in his uniform coat, hat in hand.

“I’m sorry, gentlemen,” said the nurse. “Time is up.”

But Thursday was rooted to the spot. A perilous scrum of emotions battled for dominance inside him. His throat felt choked with rage, with grief, with frustration and helplessness. His hands gripped the rails of the hospital bed as if daring anyone to drag him from the spot.

Mr. Bright walked quietly up to Thursday and put a hand on his shoulder. “Come away, Fred,” he said, gently. “Come away. Let the boy sleep.”

Thursday’s vision blurred. His shoulders sagged.

With doting care not to disturb the intravenous lines or put pressure on any aggrieved spot, Fred Thursday tucked the blankets up more closely around his sleeping child, and when this tender ministration was done, he allowed himself to be led quietly away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: but it was nothing so unloved


	6. DeBryn

It was fully dark as Doctor DeBryn pulled onto the suburban terrace in his brown Morris-Minor. The windscreen wipers came to a squealing halt as the engine cut off, fresh snowflakes immediately dabbing the windscreen. He had parked under a streetlamp down the block from the Thursday home, and when, with a grunt, he pulled himself out of the car, the cold was a bit shocking. He paused a moment to bundle up with wool cap, mittens, and a muffler tucked tidily around his neck. He then dug out his medical bag, which still carried the files that Morse had wanted safeguarded.

“Doctor DeBryn, is that you?”

A pale shape was approaching from the direction of the bus shelter down the street. He didn’t recognize the girl until she had passed into the well of snow-streaked light under the streetlamp. She wore a powder blue coat, the collar of which was held together against her throat by a bare hand.

Joan Thursday was a figure he knew mostly from cameos in conversations with her father over the years. Joan needed picking up from work; Joan was going to visit a friend in Newcastle; Joan wanted a new pop record from the shop. Occasionally in years past, he would run across her in her father’s office as she met him for a cafe lunch. It had always been the off-hand interactions of daily life. But ever since the Wessex Bank raid, Joan Thursday’s name had came up less frequently in Fred’s conversation, and far more often in the less savory context of Cowley Station gossip. It gave the doctor a muddled idea of the girl. His impression felt incomplete.

“How do you do, Miss Thursday?” he said, blinking at her curiously.

“Have you come to see Dad? I’m afraid he’s not home.”

“Ah. Are you sure?”

“Afraid so. We were supposed to have dinner, but he rung to say he and Jim decided to stay in London because of the weather. Won’t be back until tomorrow.”

“Ah.” The pathologist looked down at his feet, lips pursed.

“All is well, I hope?” Her expression was one of frank curiosity.

“One can always hope.”

Joan Thursday’s eyebrows rose in droll commentary. Though the family resemblance was not strong, the expression immediately conjured up the image of a certain formidable man with a fedora and pipe. “Well,” she said, purposefully replacing skepticism with a smile, “seeing as you’ve had a wasted trip, the least I could do is offer you a cup of tea. I’m sure Mum would never forgive me if I didn’t invite you in from the cold.”

“Thank you but I really wouldn’t want to trouble you…”

Ignoring his polite rebuffs, Joan resumed making her way down the snowy street. She was in kitten heels entirely unsuited to the job, and DeBryn instinctively offered an arm. “The radio says it’ll be a real blizzard. You were better prepared than I was, I see,” she said. “Lovely scarf. Is that – ?”

“Various shades of mud brown? Oh yes. My mother crochets. I hope we wouldn’t be disturbing Mrs. Thursday?”

“Oh, um – no,” said Joan quickly. “Mum’s away at my aunt’s. I thought I might as well come over and make Dad something to warm through when he gets home.” She lifted the tote bag of groceries she carried in one hand. “I’m sure he’s not been taking care of himself otherwise. A lot of pub lunches, most likely, maybe a takeaway curry here and there for variety’s sake. Was it urgent? Your business with my dad?” she said, suddenly returning to their original topic.

He was caught off guard. “Er – yes, I am afraid it might be.”

“And you haven’t tried digging Morse out yet? I’m sure he would help you.”

By this point, DeBryn had become aware that he was the subject of a deft, seemingly casual interrogation. He could hardly blame the girl – the child of a copper must realize that finding a pathologist on one’s doorstep after dark was an ill omen indeed. He knew he must be about as welcome as a vulture circling overhead.

There seemed to be no point in beating about the bush. “I’m afraid I had rather a worrying experience at my offices this evening. A break-in.”

“Oh?” said Joan, interested. “Anything stolen?”

“Not from what I could tell. But locks broken. Files tossed about. It’s troubling to say the least.”

“Couldn’t you report it to the new station?”

“That will be my next stop, of course. But I’d hoped to speak with your father first. I’m afraid – I’m afraid I’ve become concerned about Morse.”

They had nearly arrived at the little path to the house – almost, just shy, but Joan came to an abrupt stop, meeting his eyes with a degree of immediate alarm that surprised him. “About Morse?” she said. “Has something happened?”

DeBryn had taken Detective Sergeant Morse and Miss Thursday for casual acquaintances – merely his superior’s daughter, simply her father’s sergeant. But as he looked into the girl’s frightened face, a belated understanding began to dawn in his mind.

As if someone had called out her name, the young woman’s gaze turned abruptly away. Her grip tensed reflexively, the thin bare fingers digging like talons into the doctor’s arm. 

In the days afterward, when he tried to piece together his fragmented memories of that terrible night, the doctor found that he could recall the perfection of Joan Thursday’s sudden, eerie stillness with icy clarity. The ghostly pallor of her face, the wide blue distress in her eyes, and the golden halo cast by the streetlamp above her – it all had the etched permanence of a scar on his brain.

She was staring at the house.

Snow was falling all around. Large, soft flakes. He followed her gaze through it, and saw that there was something affixed to the front door of her home. His vision – subject now to the pixilating slide of snowflakes on the lenses of his spectacles – took a moment to register the dark, cruciform mass. It looked lumpy and organic, patched here and there with stiff, pale shapes. He stared hard, trying to force it to make sense.

“Doctor DeBryn?” said Joan Thursday, the calmness of her voice curiously at odds with every line of her body, taut and delicate like the tension of a bird about to take flight. “What…what is that? On our front door?”

They were flowers.

Waxy white lilies and black roses in the shape of a cross.

“It’s a funeral wreath,” he said. He turned to her. “Has anyone…?”

“No,” she breathed.

They were both staring now. DeBryn’s eyes had adjusted well enough to the darkness that he could see that the front door was actually ajar, the black interior of the house beckoning.

That moment of stillness shared between the two of them seemed to go on for years. Then, with a soft intake of breath, Joan let her bag of groceries slip limply from her hand into the snow. In the next moment she had disappeared into the house.

With a surreal feeling like having been tipped headlong into a dream, DeBryn followed her. The first thing he did was collide clumsily with the hallstand. Fumbling, he tried to switch on the lamp beside it. It didn’t work. Neither did the hall light. The electricity in the house had gone out, the heat with it. DeBryn hurried into the dining room and saw that all the windows had been opened, the curtains stirring as the house inhaled snowflakes onto the windowsills and carpets. Papers and Christmas cards had fallen off the sideboard and scattered across the floor – an interior flurry.

The house was as frigid as a tomb.

“Mum! Dad!” Joan was rushing from dining room to kitchen, kitchen to living room, calling in fear for people she knew to be safely elsewhere. “Sam! Mum! Morse! _Morse_!” She ran up the stairs to the bedrooms, then came almost tumbling down the stairs again. She threw out her hands in an angry, helpless gesture. “I don’t understand,” she cried. “ _Who’s been in our house_?”

“I – I don’t know,” said DeBryn.

He could see her silhouette moving in the darkness, could tell she was pacing, could hear the harsh panting from her wild flight. “Doctor,” she said, rounding on him, her strained voice both terrified and demanding: “What were you going to tell my dad? About Morse? Why are you here?”

DeBryn exhaled hard, his breath fogging the air. “I can’t find Morse. No one has seen him.”

“What do you mean you can’t find him?”

“No one has seen him. Not since early this morning. He’s missing.”

“ _Missing_?”

“He’s been absent all day with no explanation.”

Joan was silent, her shoulders rising and falling with each panting breath. “Missing?” she said again, her voice suddenly weak. “With that _thing_ on our front door?”

DeBryn stared at her in horror.

“Oh my God…” she moaned. Her hands covered her mouth. “Oh my God…!”

“We – we can’t know that...” said DeBryn. “We’ll call it in. We’ll ring the station. _We’ll find him_.”

She nodded numbly, and DeBryn went to the phone. He lifted the receiver and heard the high whine of the dial tone. “Operator? Operator? I need the police. _Yes_ , it’s an emergency – ” He gave the address, feeling that his powers of description had failed to convey the uncanny urgency of the break in. He hung up and turned to reassure the still-pacing Joan Thursday.

At that moment there was a sound in the kitchen – the gentle knock of a breeze-blown door against a doorframe. Joan froze. Their eyes met. “The door to the back garden,” she said.

“ _Quickly_.”

Outside, the snow seemed to glow faintly blue in the meager moonlight. Fred Thursday’s tool shed was crouched near the garden wall, snow piled on its crumbling slate roof. All around it were the wintry shapes of dormant gardening pots and bare branches. The garden seemed deserted. Peaceful.

A few metres away, something was lying on the ground, still and quiet in the dark. Half-covered in the rapidly mounting snow, it seemed as modest as a bundle of clothes, a scarecrow left out forsaken for the seasons to consume. But it was nothing so unloved.

Slight of build, long-limbed, hair all tangled with sleet. He lay on his stomach, half-curled inward, head turned away. His hands were bound behind his back, but he made no struggle to free them. He lay completely still as snowflakes slowly, silently buried him.

“My God,” breathed DeBryn. “Morse…”

Joan Thursday was already gone – flying across the garden – screaming, screaming his name. She threw herself to her knees and reached out.

In the next moment DeBryn found himself somehow beside them, professional reflex having taken over his limbs. He was already opening his medical bag by the time his mind caught up with him. His voice was hoarse: “Miss Thursday…is he dead?”

“I – I don’t know…” Her hands had come away slick and red-black with blood. They were trembling.

“Help me move him.”

Together they manoeuvered Morse onto his back. The entire right half of the young man’s face was darkly caked with thickened blood, his sensitive features ripped, swollen, obscured, the socket of one eye entirely drowned in blood. They gathered him into her lap, and Joan cradled his head in the crook of her elbow, looking down into the wreck of his face. The poor girl was suppressing the urge to cry, her shoulders hitching with every stifled sob. " _Keep still_ ," ordered the doctor. He put two practiced fingers firmly to Morse's carotid artery and felt nothing.

Nothing.

Not allowing himself to show the slightest degree of panic, DeBryn reached into his medical bag for scissors and a stethoscope.

“Help me, Miss Thursday – his coat –”

The two of them struggled briefly with the buttons before they could peel the coat and blood-soaked shirt away. Despite the cold, DeBryn found himself sweating – beads of perspiration dripped down his face, and his glasses fogged. He cut apart Morse’s vest, and put the cold metal receiver over his heart.

Nothing.

Nothing – then a weak, erratic whisper. Not much, but everything. 

“He’s alive,” said DeBryn hoarsely, and Joan burst into grateful tears.

The doctor bundled Morse back up as best he could. “Keep him close,” he directed tersely. “Keep him warm.” He shrugged out of his own coat and draped it over Morse’s legs. It was snowing ever harder. Joan hugged Morse tightly, her cheek braced against the crown of his head. A fraught silence reigned as they both huddled over him, chafing his limbs, and trying to keep him shielded from the storm. 

Minutes grew into a quarter hour. Still they waited, frozen and huddled. Time had slowed to a surreal crawl, and DeBryn was later never sure how long that bitter-cold nightmare in the back garden really lasted. It might have been minutes or years.

Distantly, a sound began carrying eerily over the rooftops of the neighborhood – the high, echoing wail of a siren. Blue and red lights began to flash, lighting up the night sky and casting weak washes of alternating color into the treetops of the back garden.

The rest of the night was a gruesome blur – surgery and suspense, hope and despair. It was only much later that he remembered that when they had first arrived in that garden, there had been footprints.

Multiple sets.

Only half filled in with snow. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the red ink had run and blurred


	7. Thursday

The tableau felt distant, remote. Like looking at a painting of miscellaneous strangers in an overlit room: Mr. Bright, Jim Strange, the kindly nurse, and two plainclothes detectives from Kidlington. The air smelled of disinfectant. Phones rang in the distance, the noise of the hospital echoed surreally, and Mr. Bright was explaining in low and somber tones how and where Thursday’s wounded detective sergeant had been found. “I’m sorry, Fred,” he said, voice a whisper. “I know this all comes as a terrible shock. I just don’t know what to say.”

Fred Thursday only had flashes of what happened after that. They were standing at the car and Jim Strange was brushing snow off of the windscreen. They were driving and snowflakes were drifting in and out of the tunnel made by the headlights. They were in Strange’s living room, and that honest sergeant was ludicrously holding a floral-patterned pillowcase.

“Mr. Bright says Mrs. Thursday is away, is that right, sir?”

Thursday blinked, realizing it was actually the second time Strange had asked the question. He cleared his throat but the words still came out thickly: “At her sister’s…”

“Just as well, isn’t that right, sir?” said Strange, talking to him gently, in the same tones he used on lost children and stray dogs. “Wouldn’t want her to be upset. We’ll have some good news to tell her by the time she’s back, won’t we, sir? Few hours’ kip on our couch. I’ll have it all made up comfortable for you, sir. That’s the ticket.”

Which was how Fred Thursday came to wake up in borrowed pyjamas, lying on an understuffed couch at Jim Strange’s house three days before Christmas. He watched the weak light of dawn wash in through the windows. It touched the threadbare planes and well-worn angles of the furniture, and cast a drab white light on Strange’s carefully curated tchotchkes, pristine _National Geographics_ , and tinselly Christmas decorations.

Across the hall, there was a click and a snap – then a beam of fluorescence flashed out into the hallway. Thursday saw Strange shuffle from his bedroom into the kitchen. The radio came on: the sound of the BBC news and the pips telling the six o’clock hour. Soon there was a clatter of cracked eggs and the hiss of frying bacon, the percolation of coffee and the jump of fresh toast in the toaster. It seemed that no matter what the day might hold for him, Jim Strange intended to start it off with a full English fry up.

Thursday tried not to grunt as he hauled his body off the couch. There was a crick in his neck and his eyes felt as dry and jaded as if he’d not closed them at all. But with his host distracted by his breakfast, he was able to pad quietly out of the room unobserved.

The rest of Strange’s house might be tidy and surprisingly domestic, but the bedroom at the top of the stairs held the chaos of a young man who barely kept body and soul together. Clothes strewn about. Bed unmade. There were books on every surface left facedown to mark their places, all of which turned out to be by the same poet: Gerard Manley Hopkins. Half-full cups of tea and uneaten crusts of toast had been left behind on saucers: sure signs that Morse had been avoiding Strange’s company at mealtimes. Thursday found a couple of empty whiskey bottles – which did not surprise him – and more than a few wadded up off-track betting slips – which did.

Morse’s shabby car coat was draped on the back of a chair. Thursday went through the pockets. In the left pocket he found a single glove – a woman’s glove, made of blue wool. In the right pocket, Thursday found nothing but a hole in the lining and a many-times-folded piece of paper. He ironed out the paper with the palm of his hand.

“Scherzo in C Minor Violin and Piano…Op. 78 Violin Sonata No. 1 in G major…Op. 100 Violin Sonata No. 2 in A major…” he read aloud. There was no location given, but it was dated Monday, December 20th. It might be evidence that Morse might have skived off work for an hour the day before his assault, but Thursday couldn’t see how it could be much more than that.

Thursday spent a few minutes opening drawers and looking through the closet. He found a few boxes full of papers and old university work, but that was all. With a long sigh, he was soon forced to give up. He was not sure what he had hoped to find, but there no clues, no indications as to what might have happened to his bagman.

His eyes alighted on the record player – that holiest of relics in his sergeant’s inner sanctum. There was a Brahms violin sonata set up on the turntable, waiting in silence for its owner to return. Thursday considered it for a long moment, then he turned the volume down low and dropped the needle.

The music came out quietly at first: lush chords held in tense restraint, the music rippling and ebbing and dying. Then the voice of a single violin began weeping in the darkness – a long monologue of sorrow.

The cold hand of grief closed slowly around Thursday’s heart. Here among Morse’s things, the young man had felt close by, as if he had just recently left the room – was just barely out of reach – as if he were not farther away than he had ever ventured from all the concerns of this mortal world.

“What happened, Morse?” asked Thursday aloud, his voice a gruff whisper. “Tell me.”

The detective went through the room again, working this time with the music as his background. He noticed a pair of Morse’s shoes had been taken off as if the boy had simply stepped on the back of the right shoe, then the left, his footsteps still trailing one after the other. The shoes were extremely muddy: crusted all around the soles and up over the laces. There wasn’t much opportunity around Oxford – with its paved streets and manicured lawns – to find a heavy patch of mud, but somehow Morse had done so.

Intrigued by the peculiarity, Thursday went through the nearby pile of dirty discarded clothes that spilled out over the hamper. He quickly came across a pair of trousers that were sodden and stained with mud up over the knees. Thursday then looked at the car coat again – it was dry, but looking more closely he noted that there was a tide-line of mud that rose as far as the hip pockets.

“What in the world have you been doing, lad?” he asked aloud. 

He reexamined the crumpled up recital programme. He looked at it more carefully this time, trying to channel his sergeant and find the performance itself as interesting as Morse would have done. He failed in that regard – try as he might, the name of the songs meant nothing to the old copper. But he was rewarded for his effort when something else caught his eye.

“MS 30305 - 30306” was written on the paper in red felt pen, quite neatly, clearly not in Morse’s haphazard handwriting. Beneath these notations were two lines of rapid handwriting that looked like Morse’s:

_felled felled are all felled_

_not spared not one_

The letters had bled a little when the paper had got damp. The red ink had run and blurred.

As Brahms took a dark turn, the detective inspector stood thinking about the unlikely series of events that he had discovered: on Monday, Morse had gone to a concert; afterward he and a third party had written these perplexing notes on the recital programme; then around the same time, Morse suffered a mishap that resulted – somehow – in a partial submersion in muddy water.

Could it be that someone had accosted Morse the day _before_ the assault that landed him in hospital?

A little while later, the detective made his way to the kitchen having dressed himself for the day with no great care. His forelock kept falling over one eye and he had shaved with a borrowed razor, the result being that he had scraped himself raw and looked every inch as haggard as he felt.

Strange took a seat beside his gov’nor and nudged a cup of steaming coffee toward him. The sergeant had been white-faced with shock the night before, but he seemed to have returned to his usual stolid self – a little cowed and regretful perhaps, like a family Labrador affected by his master’s mood. “You feeling ok, sir?”

Thursday turned an exhausted but rather droll eye on him. “Can’t say that I am, Jim.”

“Sorry, sir. I only meant…”

  
“You’re all right,” he said through a sigh. “You’re all right.”

Reluctant to intrude again on his boss’s grief, Strange resigned himself to tucking in to his breakfast. Thursday was lost in his own thoughts, not touching his own meal. The sunny-side eggs congealed on the plate and the butter stood pat on the toast. “I hadn’t seen him since the station closed,” he confessed to the room suddenly. “Had – had he got into any kind of scrape that he wouldn’t want to tell his Guv’nor about?”

Strange looked surprised, then uncomfortable. “What d’you mean, sir?”

“Gambling. Drinking more than usual. Trouble with his girl, maybe.”

“If you mean that Frenchie girl he’d been seeing, pretty sure that’s on the rocks. Least he hadn’t been slipping off like a tomcat to see her anymore," he said, unable to prevent himself

“When was this?”

“Oh. Weeks back.”

“He never said,” said Thursday, feeling uncomfortably like he’d missed a step. “Was there anything else? Had he seemed troubled?”

“I don't know, sir. He's a standoffish devil at the best of times," said Strange. "You think he knew someone was after him, sir?”

“He’d gone to my house,” said Thursday impatiently. “He must have wanted to tell me _something_.”

Strange’s face twisted with dismay. “And someone followed him there?”

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? Meanwhile the snow kept us in London…”

A heavy silence fell as the awfulness of the situation weighed on their imaginations. Morse had run to a place he thought of as safehaven, only for disaster to follow him there...

Thursday wrenched his mind away. “Those Kidlington men,” he said. “What did they tell you last night? Are they running the show?”

“Yes, sir. Division put DI Tucker in charge, DS Landrum is his bagman. I’m supposed to assist. They’re coming here to go through Morse’s things just as soon as they can walk here from Cowley.”

“Walk? From Cowley?”

“The roads aren’t passable, sir. It was supposed to snow about ten inches last night, ended up over a foot. The investigation’s going to be run from Cowley seeing as it’s closest.” He paused and looked down at the tabletop with gun-shy eyes. “Think they’ll let you work the case, sir?”

Thursday sniffed.

“What will you do, sir?”

“You think I’ll sit around on my hands?”

“No, sir,” said Strange, then quietly: “I’ll help you if I can.”

“No you won’t,” growled the old copper, his voice rough as gravel. “We’re in bloody no-man’s land. Who knows what Division will make of this mess? I’ve seen it go wrong before, make no mistake.”

“What’d you mean?”

Thursday wanted to tell him, but the words refused to leave his lips. The smoke and bile of Mile End was a flavor too difficult to relate, and the affable, smiling ghost of Mickey Carter was too painful to describe. “Never you mind,” he said finally. “Just you do as you’re told and keep your head down. You do your job. I’ll do mine.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the balance of justice


	8. Miss Frazil

Not long after dawn, the editor of The Oxford Mail could be found smoking a cigarette in the front quadrangle of Balliol College. It was already her third, or possibly fourth, of the young day. Pacing from one end of the cloister to the other, she exhaled clouds of smoke into the brittle morning.

A pair of colt-legged undergraduates passed Miss Frazil in thick jumpers and wool college scarves, their breath coming in puffs of silvery air. One carried a mug of coffee that he’d secreted away from the Buttery, the telltale steam escaping like the tail of a kite through his fingers. A porter was salting the stone-flagged corridor the boys had just crossed, hoping to prevent the dangers of ice from meeting the dangers of rutted medieval stone. “Alright, love?” he said, as he neared her. “Want to come into the lodge and have a cuppa? You must be frozen through.”

“I’m fine, Roger. I don’t mind waiting.”

He gave her a doubtful look. The newspaper editor was hardly dressed for the weather. She was wearing yesterday’s insufficient coat, yesterday’s clothes wrinkled beneath it. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she had uncharacteristically neglected to do her hair, leaving it tied in a messy bun.

“Won’t find many people out and about on a morning like this. Besides yourself of course,” he said, scratching his chin. “How did you get here?”

“Caught a lift into town on a snowplow.”

“No kidding?”

“No kidding.”

Roger whistled low, impressed. “Shame to waste the effort. He’s probably holed up with pilfered rations from the Buttery, like most everybody as lives in college on a day like today. You’ll only catch him if he wants a hot meal – “

“I’ll wait,” she said.

Roger pressed his lips together in tacit disapproval. Rock salt in hand, he started to get back to his work. “He’s a nasty old goat, that one,” he said, turning back suddenly. “You take care.”

“I always do.” She gave him a wan smile.

It was another hour before the celebrated professor of mathematics emerged from hibernation. He was a small, prosperous-looking man, bald and bespectacled and muffled with an excessively long scarf. The cold had pinked his cheeks, and he wore wool house slippers to scuff his way around the salted stone flags. He looked like any other elderly don – not, by any discernible means, the nasty old goat that had been foretold.

“Professor Paschal,” she called out. “I wonder if I could have a few minutes of your time – “

The professor’s rosy face suddenly twisted into exaggerated distaste. “I’ve no time for cloister loiterers,” he declared, and tried to push past her.

Miss Frazil barred the doorway with her arm. “A moment of your time for The Oxford Mail?”

“My column in the _Times on Sunday_ was all I have to say on the matter. Full stop. No further comment. Good day to you.”

“I’m not here seeking comment about your essay on nuclear policy – “

“I have no time for you, regardless.”

“I have a proposal that I trust you’ll find to your advantage, Professor.”

He heaved a sigh of exasperation. “Who let you in? Was it Roger? _Damn_ that man.”

“Making time for the press is the price of being a public intellectual,” she said, and gave him a thin smile. “I really must insist that you hear me out.”

“Oh you insist do you?” he asked. “Follow me, then, _if you insist_.”

The Senior Common Room was full of comfortable, worn-out furniture left over from a more genteel age. The windows were tall, the blinds half-drawn, yet the snow in the courtyard reflected a white, soft light that filled the room with a kindly illumination. Books lined the cabinets with lustrous gilt lettering on their calf spines. A small fire was burning in the fireplace, giving the room the scent of soot and spruce. It was a grand and comfortable sanctuary – exactly the kind that Miss Frazil had always loved to disrupt.

“Let’s get this over with,” said the professor, removing his coat. The initial impression of dowdy scholasticism gave way to a monogrammed smoking jacket and a silk shirt with a pattern at least thirty years too young for the man. Miss Frazil made a wry twist of her lips, but made no comment. She produced the encrypted letter she’d received through Ewell the previous day. “I need help decoding this. I’ve been told no one has been able to crack it. ‘Impossible,’ they tell me.”

As she expected, this struck the famous mathematician as unacceptable challenge to his brilliance. He snatched it from her outstretched hand and cast an eye over it, frowning. It held enough interest for him to move over to the table and pull out a chair for himself, leaving Miss Frazil standing. He seemed to be counting words, pointing with one sausage-like finger, his lips moving.

“It doesn’t have linguistic repetitiveness – no repeated words, no obviously recurring participles or tenses. A good codesetter will usually attempt to hide naturally occurring patterns. That means this encryption is superficially clever, but in the end will prove to be crude. What’s the key?”

“Key?”

He shot her a glance over his spectacles. “Yes, _of course_ there’s a key.”

“You mean like a password?”

“Could be. Sometimes it’s even a physical object, such as a piece of paper with cut-outs that align with only the letters you’re supposed to read. In a code of this kind, the codesetter coordinates with the recipient in advance. The key can be complicated or absurdly simple. What is this bar of music across the top – this treble clef with a key signature on it? Looks like it’s from Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.”

“I took that as just part of the stationery,” she said, looking at it with new eyes.

“Nothing is unintentional to someone who has worked in the field. Did your codesetter know what he was about? If he did, you shouldn’t overlook the music. Now, there you are. On your way and good day to you.” He handed the letter back as her note of dismissal.

“You’re a consultant for Special Branch, aren’t you?” she said suddenly. “Word is you did forensic accounting for them. And, of course, that business you did for the Ministry of Defence out at Porton Down…”

He stared at her. “How the devil did you know about that?”

“I’ll take that as confirmation,” said Miss Frazil. “Good. I had been worried this might take all day, and I have more important places to be.”

There was an ugly, mottled color in his cheeks. “What do you want?” he seethed. “Was this little bit of nonsense about a code just a ploy? Who are you really? I suppose you’ve come round to read me a lecture on world peace or the bomb. If you don’t leave this instant, I’ll call the police.” He reached for the telephone.

“Go right ahead. They have more important matters on their minds this morning. You’ll be waiting some time.”

He paused with his hand still on the receiver. Perhaps it was the strange edge to her voice, or perhaps he was clever enough to realize that she was quite a different breed than the usual protestors who wheedled their way into his office. “What is this?” he said, eyes narrowing. “What are you after?” 

“Quid pro quo.”

He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “What can you imagine I’d do for you?”

“Four prisoners escaped from HMS Petworth last spring. I think I know which prisoners escaped, but I need access to prove my theory. It’s a high security prison so I will need high clearance access.”

“Oh is that all? Assuming I could even get you in – “

“You can,” she said calmly.

“Why would I do any of this nonsense for you? What’s to my advantage?”

Rather than answer, Dorothea Frazil gave a long sigh and sat down on the desk beside him, smoothing out the skirt of her dress. She crossed her feet at the ankles, lit a cigarette, and turned to him with a smile. “You know,” she said, almost conversationally, “an old colleague of mine recently took a jab at the work I do here in Oxford. ‘Academic fetes and student prizes,’ I think he called it. He covers corruption and graft in the big city, and he thinks I don’t see anything like that in Oxford.” She held his gaze and said in a soft voice: “That was silly of him, wasn’t it?”

The professor sat perfectly still for a moment. “I have no idea what you could mean.”

“One of the student prizes I’m writing about now, for instance. The Ludwell-Street Prize for Advanced Mathematics. You administer it, don’t you, Professor?”

“Yes. Yes. What of it? That’s public information.”

“It’s very prestigious. An endowed prize. No small sum, either. When I was new to town, I happened to ask the late master of Balliol where the money came from, and he told me that it’s from the interest gained off a vast piece of property the benefactor left in trust. Yet I’ve noticed that over the years since the late master’s passing, the amount of this prize doesn’t change at all. Not one penny. That’s unusual for something based on interest, isn’t it?” She smiled charmingly. “It’s as if someone wanted the public to believe the prize was a set sum. And with no oversight over the administrator, that would be an easy enough trick to get away with.”

“How – how dare you suggest such a thing,” he stammered. “The maths are complicated of course. You couldn’t possibly understand. Other considerations like – like erosion on the sea coast. The inaccessibility of the property to developers. The West Coast of Africa is like that…”

“Sierra Leone, specifically.”

“Yes, fine, Sierra Leone – “

“Which is also rich in diamonds,” she pointed out. 

It was very satisfying to see the professor’s face drain of color. She was trying not to smirk as she picked a bit of lint off her knee. “The story was due to go to press next Monday, but I was going to do a final fact check this week before we ran it, complete with comments from your colleagues here. The dean and bursar’s offices are just in the next staircase over so I could go straight there from here. What do you think they’ll say about you keeping the small matter of the value of a diamond mine all to yourself, Professor Paschal?”

He sat there, white as chalk, and said nothing.

“A superficially clever scheme, but in the end a crude one,” she said, raising a mocking eyebrow.

“I’ll – I’ll give you whatever you want - ”

He began to grovel in earnest. It was not pleasant; it was all very well turning the screw, but this spectacle of blubbering desperation was distasteful in the extreme, and Miss Frazil found herself hesitating. Journalism was her life’s work. It had not always been an entirely wholesome career: she had dodged bullets in Korea, greased palms in Whitehall, used leverage to her advantage. But as she looked into this odious little man’s terrified face, the queasy realization that she was now fully engaged in extortion gave her pause.

“Why is this worth so much to you?” he demanded, as if reading her thoughts. “Why are you doing this?”

She looked away. Her eyes absently followed the delicate trail of smoke rising from her cigarette as she once again weighed extortion against the balance of justice. And once again she arrived at the same conclusion that had driven her from a night’s anxious pacing in the lobby of the Radcliffe Infirmary to the front quadrangle of Balliol College just after dawn.

“Justice for a friend,” she said quietly. “A friend who means a great deal to me.”

She turned hard eyes on the professor. “If you get me into Petworth Prison, I won’t run my story.”

“Yes, yes. Alright. Whatever you want. But – but who should I talk to?” Fear of failing to deliver what she demanded had made him peevish. His voice was shrill: “I – I wouldn’t know the first thing about how to get access to a prison. I don’t even know which prisoners you’re trying to see!”

“Then allow me to help you, Professor.” Miss Frazil reached out and picked up the receiver of the telephone. The dial tone was loud on the line as she handed it over. “Their names are Cole and Peter Matthews.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: a stopped earth


	9. Iain Ewell

Butler at the door, cigar smoke in the air, port in every glass – gentlemen’s clubs were always the keenest, most cutting reminder that he was an imposter. Son of nobody, graduate of nowhere, trying to navigate the paneled oak corridors of privilege and title. Iain Ewell had made his way through life having carved a weapon out of the working class chip on his shoulder – mostly to successful and remunerative effect. Yet he still loathed being forced into the redoubts of the old boys’ club, like a fox hunted into a stopped earth.

“If I may take your coat, sir?” the butler was saying. 

Ewell’s coat was a hand-made Carnaby Street creation. A bespoke item: long pile brown velvet with a striped silk lining. He parted with it unwillingly.

“Very good, sir. Assistant Chief Constable Morton is in the Map Room. He’s expecting you.”

But Ewell still couldn’t move.

“If I may,” said the butler with a smug smile. “The Map Room is just down this corridor to your left, sir.”

Ewell gave him a show of sarcastic teeth. “Thanks, brother. You’re a real pal.”

There were two gentlemen rather than one waiting for the journalist in the Map Room. They were already ensconced in deep, winged chairs by the fire, having enjoyed supper before Ewell arrived. The thick smell of slightly burnt potatoes and roasted meat still hung rather noxiously in the air. There were large gilt-framed maps of the British Empire up on the walls and a monstrously large Persian carpet that had been rolled at one end to fit into the snug little room. Oak shelves were lined with calf-bound books so pristine, Ewell was confident that none of the old imperialists who’d passed through this space had ever been tempted to take one down and crack its virgin binding.

“Ah, Mr. Ewell,” said ACC Morton, getting to his feet and reaching out to shake his hand. “I’ve taken the liberty of inviting a guest to our meeting. Allow me to introduce Philip Chandler. He’s a Trinity man…”

“Yes, but at the Other Place,” he said, smiling. Chandler was a tall man with prematurely white hair that he combed back, sleek as silk. He had strong hands, surprisingly well calloused. “How do you do?” he said politely.

“Mr. Chandler, it’s an honor,” said Ewell. “I’m familiar with your work of course.”

“And I’m familiar with yours.”

“Are you?” said Ewell, raising his eyebrows.

“You’ve been writing about my real estate company’s dealings in the East End for months now. And I can’t help but notice that it hasn’t been entirely complimentary,” he said with a self-deprecating chuckle. “I hope you’ll have port with us?”

“I hate the stuff,” said Ewell, with a broad and highly unfriendly smile. “But I’ll have a scotch with you, if you like.”

“Splendid.”

The butler came and went with the bottle of scotch and cigars, giving Ewell a chance to steal an appraising glance at the ACC’s guest. The fire and the leather chairs combined to make the room stifling, yet the real estate magnate still looked as fresh and crisp as when he had dressed that morning. It was a surprise – an intriguing one – to find that Thames Valley’s second-ranking policeman had invited him to this meeting.

“I was very sorry to hear about the attack on your detective, Mr. Morton,” said Ewell, turning to the policeman. “I read about it in The Oxford Mail yesterday. One of my old friends wrote the story. She wrote that he’s one of your finest officers.”

“Ah,” said Morton, looking uncomfortable.

“Been rather a difficult time here in Oxford, hasn’t it? I seem to recall you lost a young constable not long ago. In that gangland affair – Jamaican racketeers, wasn’t it? Dear me,” he said, pulling a face and chuckling. “A bit sordid for Oxford isn’t it? What’s become of the place?”

Morton scowled. “It’s the times. Hippies and hashish and free love, and all that nonsense. Rotting society from the inside out.”

“Was it Ringo Starr who attacked your detective, then?”

Morton’s granite eyebrows drew together in disapproval, his pouched eyes looking beadily at Ewell’s humor. “The murder of a policeman is no laughing matter, sir.”

“Murder? Is he not expected to recover, then?”

“I’m afraid it’s looking rather grim for the chap,” said Morton. “I hope you’ll appreciate that we’d prefer to be quite serious about the matter at hand? I think you’ll find that neither of us is in a frivolous mood.”

“Of course,” said Ewell, putting a hand on his heart as if in apology.

“I’ve asked you here tonight because I received word that you’re going to publish a story that will be embarrassing to Thames Valley CID’s reputation.”

“I imagine it will be _very_ embarrassing,” agreed Ewell.

Morton was an old-fashioned, rigid veteran – an Edwardian martinet out of his time. The London reporter’s sarcasm registered to him only as a lack of seriousness, and the policeman’s tone grew accordingly more and more like that of an exasperated schoolteacher: “I hope that you and I can come to an understanding of sorts. We won’t get in your way. We won’t make difficulties. We only ask that you publish the _whole_ story.”

“And you’re offering to provide me with the whole story?”

“Certainly. I think, once you have all the facts, you’ll find that CID has been acting in good faith. In exchange, we only ask that you extricate Mr. Chandler’s good name from this mess before you publish.”

Ewell’s eyes slid over to Chandler’s face. He then sat back in his winged-back chair and took a sip of scotch, his mouth curling into a smile around the Scottish peat and smoke. The glass was fine heavy-bottomed crystal, and he paused a moment to savor the feel. “Nice place, this. No malt vinegar on the table, but it’ll do.”

“Do you know who these escaped racketeers are, Mr. Ewell?” demanded Morton bluntly.

Ewell considered lying, but there seemed no point in being coy. “I do not.”

The two gentlemen exchanged unreadable glances. “Well. That’s disappointing, I must say,” said Chandler.

“We had been hoping you’d be able to help us, Mr. Ewell. You see Special Branch has chosen to freeze us out. They recognize that the prison break has become a massive public relations liability, and have chosen to let Thames Valley CID take the inevitable fall for it entirely on our own. Yes, Mr. Ewell, that means they won’t even tell us what manner of ruffian we’re dealing with.”

“Gives one rather the feeling of living in Coventry during the War,” said Chandler with an odd smile. “I’m afraid we’re quite on our own.”

Ewell looked from one man to the other, beginning to feel for the first time that he was not entirely sure of his position. He plastered on an easy smile. “What’s your part in this, Chandler?” said Ewell. “You’ve yet to explain why your good name needs shielding.”

The two gentlemen again made eye contact, and Ewell was sure that they had rehearsed what they would and would not divulge to him over their roast beef earlier that evening. Morton gave Chandler a nod. “I don’t want to be too specific, you understand,” said the businessman. “None of this can end up in the paper. This must be strictly off the record.”

“Fine.” Ewell waved impatiently. “Go on.”

Chandler exhaled. “I had some peccadilloes of a _private_ nature in my past. These have been, shall we say, exploited?”

“Ah,” said Ewell, narrowing his eyes. “The nasty old gangsters from London have found you out? Blackmailing you, are they?

Chandler gave him a tight smile. “Quite.”

“Are they strong-arming you?”

“No, it’s been quite civilized – as far as extortion goes,” said Chandler with something that resembled humor. “The blackmailer demanded a series of money drops from me – money left at a postal box in Banbury, a _poste restante_ address in Thame, that sort of thing. Quite neatly hands-off.”

“I had Detective Inspector Giles Tucker look into it. He’s one of my best,” said Morton. “Tucker was finally able to take photos of the man who picked up the money from these locations. Go ahead, Philip. Show him.”

Chandler took an envelope out of his breast pocket and slid it across the table to Ewell. The envelope contained a number of black and white photos of a young man. In one photo, the young man was standing on the Broad talking animatedly to a blonde woman whose back was to the camera. In another, he was outside a village post office. “You think you can identify who this fellow has been reporting back to?” said Ewell, eyes narrowing.

“Yes, as much as that might still be possible,” said Morton sighing. “I’m afraid circumstances have changed.”

“How have circumstances changed?” said Ewell, still studying the young man in the photos.

High-cheekbones, a long mouth, scattered freckles: he was handsome in a poetical sort of way – a modern day Keats. Large pale eyes glanced toward the camera like glowing lanterns in the hollows of an austere face. He made for an intriguing and unexpected sort of blackmailer. “Who is he?” he asked.

It was Morton who answered. “That is Detective Sergeant Morse of Thames Valley CID.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the expense of a little shoe leather


	10. Thursday

That his neighbors had not seen anything useful was hardly unexpected given the early winter darkness and the threatening weather. He had conducted his one-man canvass only to confirm that seemingly everyone in Headington had burrowed down in their warm homes with a glass of eggnog, and had not heard a peep from the outside world. That a young policeman had been beaten within an inch of his life and left for dead in their midst had gone somehow unremarked.

The old copper tipped his hat low over his eyes and walked on – on to every house between Headington and Magdalen Bridge, on to every pub and stationer’s, on toward abject failure at finding a single trace of Endeavour Morse. But long experience had taught Fred Thursday that dogged pursuit would eventually flush out information like birds from the underbrush, and in thirty years he had never been more grimly determined for the expense of a little shoe leather to refund him in evidence.

By the second day, the main thoroughfares had been plowed, and the city was beginning to wake up from its enforced slumber. With wet and frozen feet, the detective trudged on toward the old City Centre. The Sheldonian Theatre appeared on his left: an awkward, truncated, marzipan lump of a building that still managed to have a dour and impressive appearance – the result of what Morse would describe as Sir Christopher Wren’s blending of Baroque and Classical and what Thursday would describe as “ugly.” Music was performed at the Sheldonian, however, and that is what led the detective inspector to loiter outside the gates, looking up with a squint at the busts of Roman Emperors wearing dunces’ caps of snow.

At last, a caretaker came out with a burlap sack full of rock salt for the steps. “Sorry, sir. Closed today.”

“Detective Inspector Fred Thursday, Thames Valley CID,” he said, holding out his warrant card and then a black-and-white police portrait of Morse. “Have you seen this man recently?”

The man patted his pockets and gave a sigh. “I don’t have my glasses with me,” he said apologetically. “What’s he done?”

“He’s been the victim of a crime,” said Thursday. “He’s a frequent concert-goer, I wonder if you might’ve seen him…”

“Oh, I really couldn’t say. There are so many concerts – and so many regulars. This is Oxford.”

Thursday dug out the crumpled recital programme he had taken from Morse’s room. “What about this concert? Did this take place at the Sheldonian?”

The caretaker squinted hard at the words, holding them up close like a jeweler. “I’m sorry, I can’t quite read this lettering. I’m getting so farsighted,” he added with a sigh. “Who’s the composer?”

“The programme doesn’t say,” said Thursday, shoulders sagging, but then he remembered the record on Morse’s turntable, he said hopefully: “Brahms, maybe?”

“Ah, then it wouldn’t be here. The Sheldonian is working its way through the Baroque starting with _The Well-Tempered Klavier_ this winter.” He noted Thursday’s blank look and added: “It’s all Johann Sebastian this week. No Brahms.” Before he handed the programme back, he rubbed his thumb over it. “You know, this paper feels like cheap letter-stock, I would guess at its being a student-run recital, probably in one of the college chapels. Might be worth a look?”

Thursday moved on. Finding that there had been no recitals at Trinity College that week, he trudged on to Balliol, St. John’s, and New, but none of their porters had remembered seeing the young sergeant recently. By the time Thursday had backtracked to the colleges around Radcliffe Square, it was already getting dark. The cold air rang with the sound of metal shovels against cobble, overlain with the tinnier percussion of melting snow running off copper downspouts. In the center of it all, the Radcliffe Camera stood as iced and frosted as a monumental wedding cake.

Again, Thursday asked all the porters. But Brasenose had never seen the boy, Jesus had a bad memory for faces, and Hertford said they hadn’t had any public concerts that month. The Exeter porter squinted at the photo. “Hmm, I know that face,” he said. “Pale as milk. Eyes like a cat. He was here a few days ago for a student concert, I think. Want to talk to the organist?”

He led Thursday to the tallow-stained chapel. It was a space that shot immediately heavenward – columns reaching high like long stony ribs, meeting in a graceful geometry that Thursday had no name for. The twilight was lighting up individual colors in the stained glass windows, rosy reds and cobalt blues, seemingly lit up note by note by the slow scales the organist played from some celestial location above.

“Oy, Billy!” shouted the porter, breaking the spell.

The music stopped with a crash of chords. There was a silence. A moment later the face of an old man with a beard like a white cloud appeared over the railing. “What are you shouting about, George, for heaven’s sake?”

“This gent has something to say to you,” said the porter, nodding at Thursday.

The old man descended the ladder with the surprising agility of a mariner descending from the lofty topsails of a ship. The copper showed him the photo of his detective sergeant.

“Oh ho yes, I remember him,” said the old man, chuckling. “He told the undergraduate chamber quartet that their sense of timing was as plodding as a dog eating treacle. He wasn’t wrong.”

“When was that?”

“Monday. The Brahms Opus 51 in C minor. They butchered it. Disastrous.”

“Do you remember anything else about that day?” said Thursday eagerly. “Did he talk to anyone else?”

“No, that was enough, surely?” He grinned, clearly liking the misanthropic sergeant. “Who is he? I took him for a professor.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because he looked scathingly clever and very hard to please.”

Thursday couldn’t help but smile a little. “Can’t fault your observation. But he’s a detective.”

“Would have sworn he was a professor. He had a large file folder with him. Looked like essays to mark.”

“What time of day was this?”

“Recital went until after 1pm. Ran long. I saw him tear out of here before the last piece, but whether from disgust or because he had a pressing appointment, I couldn’t tell. For some reason, I actually think it was the latter.”

And so Thursday left the college chapel with the breadcrumb that on Monday at lunchtime, his detective sergeant had dined on dyspeptic music at Exeter College. It felt good to have Morse placed so firmly back in the world of the living, if only for a few moments. His trail hadn’t gone entirely cold – not yet. Heartened, Thursday determined to retrace the boy’s steps from there: out the great wooden portal door, bidding a grateful goodbye to the porter, then heading on to the High.

He spied Albert the newsagent in his usual spot, the snow having had as little effect on him as it had on Old Tom. Two scarves and a pair of moth-eaten woolen gloves were his only concessions to the weather.

“Fred,” said the newsagent, small eyes widening a little at the sight of the detective. He suddenly put a hand on a stack of newspapers. The movement was almost reflexive, as if trying to prevent Thursday from the shock of seeing what was printed there.

He braced himself for the headline – _Heroic Detective Sergeant Fighting for His Life_ – but he couldn’t guard against the stiletto point of emotion at seeing the photograph. It was that same old photo of Morse from The Oxford Scholars Choral Association gala: eyes wide and questioning, caught in a moment of uncharacteristically naive surprise. He seemed to be looking right at the reader – right at Thursday.

“Albert...” said Thursday softly. “You see everything in this town. What do you know about my lad? About Morse?”

The newsagent’s wind-chapped face tightened.

“We both know that a copper’s only as good as his information,” said the detective. It was a euphemism they had used over the years to indicate when Thursday was willing to slip a banknote into a newspaper as he purchased his edition of The Mail.

The newsagent looked distinctly uncomfortable. “I don’t like to say, Fred.”

“Then I’ll help you start,” said Thursday with an expansive patience that took all his effort to feign. “I found some betting slips among Morse’s things. I want to know if my lad got into any trouble.”

Albert bobbed his head from side to side. “He’s known around town to like a flutter on the horses now and then,” he admitted.

Thursday’s stomach twisted. “Was he in deep?”

“Lost a few bob here and there.”

“Was he in anyone’s black books?”

“Not that I heard. I swear, Fred. Morse was a good man.”

The use of the past tense sent shock waves along the old copper’s bones. “Listen,” he said, voice gruff. “I don’t care if it’s not pleasant. I just want to know what happened and I’m not leaving until you tell me everything you know.” Again Albert hesitated, and Thursday’s temper flashed out like sparks from flint. “ _Out with it_.”

“I – I don’t know much. Morse never went through me for his bets. Always went through bookies you don’t know, Fred. I suppose he didn’t want to make it awkward for you.”

Thursday’s mouth twisted. He grunted.

“But come to think of it…”

“ _What_?”

The newsagent swallowed hard. “Well. Morse never approved when you and me was having one of our little chats, did he? Always stiff as a schoolmaster’s rod – all po-faced. And here he was saying he wanted to know something. Gave me a quid for it, even. First time he’s ever done that.”

“What did he want to know?” demanded Thursday.

Albert looked up and down the street. He leaned in closer. “Home Farms.”

“Home Farms? What’s that mean?”

“Stud that was out Godstow way. Burned down last summer.”

Thursday cast about in his memory for the case. “Accidental, wasn’t it?”

The newsagent shrugged. “Morse wanted to know whether it had been on the up and up. Whether I’d heard anything wrong about it.”

“Had you?”

He shook his head. “But it was new on the racing scene. And you know me, Fred, I’m not involved with that crowd, you know that.”

“What crowd? Who owned the place?” pressed Thursday.

“Some big noise up in London, I think. Nobody really knew much.” But Albert was nervous now. He had said more than he intended to, and Thursday wasn’t at all sure he believed him.

“When was this that Morse came around? Last summer?”

He shook his head again. “Last week.” 

“And had he come by since? How about lunchtime Monday? I know he was around here then.”

But the newsagent was at the end of his information. He had not seen anything since the memorable occasion of the rigid and unbending Detective Sergeant Morse stooping to pay for information.

Thursday bought his copy of The Mail with a five pound note, saying: “Tell everyone who might know something that I’m willing to pay.” He turned to leave, then turned back: “And tell them this too: whoever put my boy in a hospital bed, Fred Thursday’s looking for him.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: like Peter Rabbit among the cabbages


	11. Thursday

The wind spit grains of soot and debris at Fred Thursday as he squinted at the ashy ruins of Home Farms. Where the barn had once stood, a few charred and mangled beams reached up out of the ash like the ribs of a ship sinking slowly into the black. There was a ridge of dry stone wall where the paddocks stood, then large pastures of unblemished white snow, a field of felled lumber beyond. The Thames rushed by – it was narrow near Godstow, a stone’s throw from bank to bank. The frigid water moved silent and black in rapid current, surprisingly deep, like a long black bleeding cut through the heart of England.

Thursday raised his collar against the cold as he walked around the property, occasionally kicking at the half-frozen ash. It was a wasted trip as far as he could see. He’d been nosing about the property for more than two hours, yet there seemed little hope of finding any shred, any trace of what Morse might have been chasing here. There had been nothing in the grain silo, or in the simple cottage shared by the migrant workers, or in the supply sheds.

Thursday scowled out at the landscape and wondered what the scarred earth and scorched lumber had whispered to Morse that it was declining to tell him.

He imagined his bagman standing nearby – shivering, angular shoulders hunched against the cold. He could see him so clearly: standing with one hand jammed into his pocket while the other twisted the auburn hair at the crown of his head. His head would tilt, just so, and his eyes would go wide and soft with epiphany.

“What do you reckon then?” said Thursday.

The wind sang in his ears and the gray grass rippled below it. But there was no reply forthcoming.

Head down, Thursday turned and trudged back toward his car, barely aware of his surroundings, barely caring now about the mystery that had brought him out here. It all felt very abruptly empty, pointless. The blaze of righteous anger that had driven his first steps in this investigation had flamed out, leaving only the dull ache of grief and the guilty awareness that without Morse himself there to help, the case might never be solved.

A querulous voice rang out behind him: “How dare you show yourselves on my property again? What could you possibly want here?”

He turned and saw a small woman atop an elderly mare. Woman and horse alike had long iron gray manes, but only the lady was wearing an overlarge tartan beret that crowned her head like a tilted mushroom cap. She was scowling furiously at Thursday, but all at once her expression changed.

“Oh,” she said. “I took you for someone else. Who might you be?”

“Detective Inspective Fred Thursday. Thames Valley CID.”

Her face did not grow even one shade friendlier at this news. It was rare in Thursday’s experience that someone actually took the time to look at police identification, but this eccentric person climbed down from her mount and held out her hand for the warrant card, and Thursday handed it over for close inspection. Her expression softened. “Ah. Well. That seems to put a different complexion on things, certainly. My name’s Professor Viola Blair. I’m a lecturer in town, but I live just there, beyond that hill. What are you doing here?”

“I came to look at the remains of the fire.”

“And how did you find them?”

“Unenlightening,” he said gruffly.

She nodded agreement. “Barn fires are treacherous things. Even the best maintained farms could fall prey to them. It never feels likely that bright flame will grow out of dull straw and then – _a little fire is quickly trodden out, Which, being suffer’d, rivers cannot quench_.” She made an eloquently sad gesture with her hand, waving away Home Farms like so much ash. “Et voila, here we are.”

“Here we are,” agreed Thursday heavily. His patience for the wasted trip into the country had worn thin, and he was in no mood to listen to further disquisitions from the sort of whimsical academic who complicated life all over Oxford. He started to take his leave, but she interrupted: “Are you sure you won’t have a hot cup of tea before you go? Don’t mind me saying so, Inspector, but you look done in.”

“That’s kind of you, but I really should be going – “

“Nonsense. Come along.” Sensing his indecision, she pushed harder: “As it happens, I have a story I need to tell you, Inspector. A matter of professional interest to you. Go on in ahead of me and put the kettle on. I just need to take Queenie back to her stall, won’t be a moment.”

The woman turned her mare back toward the barn, leaving Thursday to follow his marching orders. He looked at the little cottage. Ivy covered, smoke rising from the chimney, warm light glowing in the windows, it seemed like a welcome respite from the bleak, unfriendly world Thursday had found himself in. He was not unwilling to put off his return to reality for a little while longer.

Arriving at the door, Thursday’s acquiescence was immediately rewarded: an elderly sheep dog rose from a bed by the fire and waddled over to lick his hand. The dog then oversaw Thursday’s tea-making activities with complacent approval, and before long Professor Blair was hanging up her ridiculous hat and joining them. “Ah, Raleigh approves of you, does he? Well, he’s no judge of character so it doesn’t count for much.” She got out a bowl of dog food for him as the kettle began to whistle. “I have an excellent Orange Pekoe that a student brought me from India. What do you say?”

Thursday accepted, half-amused and half-too tired to contend that he felt more inclined to drink half a bottle of scotch than Orange Pekoe. “What was it you wanted to discuss with me, Professor Blair?”

“Thereby hangs a tale,” she said. “But have a seat first. Make yourself comfortable, Inspector.”

The kitchen of the cottage was of a very old English model: large hearth with cast-iron pans and skillets hung on the chimneybreast, a day-old fire banked down among a pile of ash, the embers radiating heat with surprising efficacy. The vast kitchen table was constructed of old walnut, worn smooth by generations of farmhands sitting down to communal meals, now piled high with academic detritus: letters, scholarly magazines, literary journals, books, books, and more books. The professor unceremoniously swept off an unfinished knitting project and a few old notebooks as she cleared space for her guest. She plunked down a large round Delft tin of Christmas cake, then rather more carefully poured out the tea. “I’m pleased you came in. I’m very glad a genuine policeman has wandered onto my property again.”

Thursday had brought his teacup halfway to his lips, but he set it down again. “A _genuine_ policeman?”

“Perhaps that’s not the right word,” she said, pausing. “An ‘honest’ one?”

“You’ve got my attention, Professor.”

“Good,” she said, her face settling into seriousness. “You know all about the fire at Home Farms, yes?”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing about it in your own words.”

“Well that won’t take long – I don’t know much of anything. I had recently returned from a visiting professorship at a university in America. When I came home, by awful coincidence, it happened to be the morning after the fire. I saw the smoke rising over the hill and guessed what had happened. Terrible thing. Terrible.”

“Did you know the men who died?”

She exhaled and took a slow sip of her tea, nodding. “They were good men,” she said. “Sincerely loved the horses in their care. I’m not surprised to hear that they perished trying to save the poor animals. As I said earlier, it’s a thing that could happen to any good farm. A single moment of carelessness in a lifetime of care…” She shook her head. “All four ended up in Oxford’s potter’s field, and just one simple funeral mass was said over all four pine boxes. I wanted to write to their families with my condolences, but I didn’t know where to find them. Cormac Brennan was Dublin-born. He was my favorite of the lot. Came in for tea often. Only twenty-four years old.”

Thursday winced. “My son’s age. I’ll see if I can find out where his family lives for you.”

“That’s kind of you. Thank you.”

She was quiet a moment, sipping her tea with an absent look, and Thursday gently redirected her: “Professor, has something happened that caused you some concern? Anything that you considered unusual…”

“Oh yes,” she said, her pale eyes shifting back to him shrewdly. “But not at first.”

“No?”

“At first, the stud simply closed down. Not at all surprising. Stud operations are very expensive to invest in, and the owners had suffered a great loss with the deaths of those twenty horses. Magnificent pedigrees. Racehorse stock, every one of them.”

“Pardon my asking, but could you tell that by looking at them? The horses, I mean.”

“Oh yes, Inspector. If you’re thinking that there was insurance fraud at work – claiming a bunch of nags as lost racetrack champions, that sort of thing – I’m afraid that won’t do. Truly marvelous creatures.”

Thursday frowned, disappointed at the loss of the only scheme that had suggested itself. “Who were the owners?”

“Cormac told me they were based out of London, a pair of wealthy men who went in on a partnership. I never met them of course.”

“Did the Irish lads?”

“Cormac did once,” she said, musingly. “I asked him about it. All the neighbors in this area were curious about the stud farm – it had the most money of all of us by far, you understand. Cormac laughed and said he thought he had left that sort behind in The Wall.”

“Well that’s very interesting,” said Thursday, raising his eyebrows. “The Wall doesn’t have the most immaculate reputation.”

“Indeed,” said the Professor. “Although I never saw anything that didn’t seem to be completely above board here in Oxfordshire.”

“Did the police ask you about any of this? It would’ve been my sergeant who spoke to you…”

“Yes, but quite routine questions: did you see anything, did you know the men who died, were they conscientious and of good character – that sort of thing. I don’t think it was very thoroughly looked into once the fire marshal determined it was an accident. And to be fair to your sergeant, there was no wrong-doing at that time.”

“But since then?”

“Since then, Inspector Thursday,” she said, her voice working up to deep professorial disdain, “I have been subject to a systematic campaign of intimidation and harassment by men who claim to be police officers.”

Thursday's face hardened. “Go on,” he said grimly.

“It started when two men wandered into my yard, much as you did today. Those are the men I took you for – I hope you’ll forgive me for that. They told me they were from the police and asked questions about the fire. Same as you, really. But something was not at all right.” She described the meeting with the putative policemen, ending with their not-very-veiled threat to Raleigh. “That was about two weeks ago. Since that day, I’ve found strange goings-on about my property. Last week I found that someone had left the barn door open and let my horses out in the field at night. Then I found the grain silo ransacked, as if someone had been going through it. It spoiled nearly a quarter-tonne of my grain, Inspector. That is a terrible loss for such a small farm as mine. Worse, all of the locks have been broken around my property, including the ones to this house – ”

“Why haven’t you reported this?” he demanded.

She huffed in annoyance. “I have,” she said. “I went round Kidlington to that new monstrosity they’ve built out there. New headquarters, bah! I gave my statement to a detective sergeant there who was quite sarcastic with me. Said if these men were policemen, what did I expect to happen by reporting the matter to the police? Suggested I’d forgot to stable my horses for the night, can you imagine? The cheek! I suppose it was poor old Raleigh who spoiled the grain? But the thing is, Inspector,” she said, leaning over the table. “I’m not mistaken about this. I’m not batty or senile or out of my wits. I have _seen those men_ around the land. Wandering over the hedgerows. Walking around the backfields. I see their black shapes walking across my fields and I shudder.”

“What can they be after?” he said, horrified for her. “Are they trying to frighten you?”

The stern old woman’s mask slipped a little then, and she looked almost on the verge of tears. “I can’t imagine why. It _must_ be related to the fire – nothing else of note has happened around here since Cromwell’s time. But I can’t see how it’s related. I don’t mind telling you that I’m – I’m really quite frightened at this point, I really am. I tried not to be.”

Thursday took a handkerchief from his breast pocket and handed it to her. “After your experience with Kidlington… Can I ask why you have trusted me with this story?”

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you that you have an honest face, Inspector Thursday?” she said, in a tone of exasperation. She pointed his handkerchief at him accusingly. “You’re the kind of policeman they tell children to seek out when they’ve lost their mother in a crowd. An English institution.”

He rubbed his chin a little ruefully. “Been told I looked like a copper before, but I don’t think it was intended for a compliment.” He looked down into his tea, adding: “My sergeant doesn’t look like a copper. Nobody ever sees the lad coming.”

“Your sergeant has a face like a medieval saint. Eyes like a boy who’s run away from school. A thoroughly unlikely detective.”

He stared at her.

The professor chuckled at his astonishment. “You look so surprised! I talked to him not four days ago. The day before the snowstorm. Raleigh found him in my kitchen garden, like Peter Rabbit among the cabbages.”

“You talked to Morse four days ago,” repeated Thursday, faintly. 

“He said he was just having a look around the property. But as with you, I could tell he was not one of _them_.” She jutted out her chin in the general direction of her unknown antagonists. “It’s obvious your boy hasn’t a cruel bone in his body. Those eyes for one thing! He looks _not with the eyes, but with the mind_. You two must be quite the partnership. People trust you instantly, then they confess to him everything he could ever want to know.”

Thursday felt as if all the air had been pressed out of his lungs. “You talked to Morse,” he said again.

“Oh yes, we had a lovely time. I insisted Detective Sergeant Morse come in and warm up, and he ended up staying for about two hours to chat,” she went on. “He knew my work, you see. We compared opinions about poetry. Very clever man, your sergeant.”

A small, soft smile tugged at one corner of the old man’s mouth. “Is he?” he said.

“Oh yes. In fact, he didn’t even seem very surprised when I told him my tale. He expected it somehow, I’m sure of it. As if he had come here at least partly in expectation of hearing it.”

“What specifically did you tell him?” pressed Thursday. “Please. This is important.”

She frowned a little. “I don’t understand. Hasn’t he made any progress on my case? Couldn’t you just ask Morse all this for yourself, Inspector?”

The early winter night had come on, the kitchen of the old cottage growing cozier as the sky grew purple and heavy with dusk. He could easily picture his bagman at ease here with this eccentric old scholar, swapping opinions of poetry. It would have been a meeting of the minds. Thursday imagined him relaxed and happy, allowing himself to be expansive with his poetic thoughts, comfortable in a way he rarely got to be among his colleagues in the service. 

Thursday exhaled heavily. “Morse was found badly beaten three days ago. He has not regained consciousness. They tell me….” He avoided her eyes. “They tell me he may not survive.”

There was a long silence. “I see,” said the professor at last. “Inspector…could it be that this business at my farm is the reason he was injured?”

“I have to think they’re connected. Yes.”

She was perfectly still for a moment. Then she plucked the cozy off the kettle and poured more tea – more out of a deep-seated Anglo-Saxon instinct than because either party needed it.

“Can you shed any light?” said Thursday, trying to keep them both focused. “Please. It would mean a great deal to retrace his steps. Any detail from your conversation with him, anything that stands out – ”

“He was freezing. Teeth chattering. That’s why I invited him in,” she said suddenly. “He’d got wet, you see. He was soaked.”

“Soaked?”

“He’d slipped and fallen into the river. Oh yes – yes, I remember he said he’d slipped while ‘ _following on meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank_.’”

Thursday blinked. “He what?”

Her crow’s feet crinkled up as she looked indulgently upon him. “A poem, Detective Inspector. By one of the great Oxford poets. It’s about a stand of trees that was chopped down not far from here. Felled just a quarter mile or so up the river.”

There was something about the professor’s turn of phrase that set a distant bell chiming in Thursday’s memory. He couldn’t quite place it, but at least the muddy clothes he’d found in Morse’s bedroom came forward to present themselves for accounting. It seemed that no pond or pothole within the confines of the City of Dreaming Spires had ensnared Morse, but a slippery bank along the wild Thames had given way under his feet. The young man’s coltish legs had plunged into frigid half-frozen waters, ruining his shoes, his trousers, and wetting his jacket.

At this farm. The day before the attack. At this place.

Which meant that Thursday was following in Morse’s footsteps, and he wasn’t that far behind.

“Felled trees, you say?” he said quietly, almost as if talking to himself.

“From a poem called ‘The Binsey Poplars’ by Hopkins. It’s a lament about the clearing of trees along the Thames. By some coincidence, there’s a whole bunch of lumber up there again.” She gestured with one wool-swaddled arm toward the window. “They had been cutting trees all last winter and into the spring. Cleared a whole swath right by the water.”

“Who’s ‘they’?” said Thursday urgently.

“Why, the Irish boys over at Home Farms, of course. It was both Home Farms’ land and my own. I gave my blessing because the horses need the grazing land.”

Thursday felt his pulse quicken. A story was slowly knitting itself together. He didn’t see it – not quite, not yet – but he knew that Morse had done, and he knew that he could follow Morse. “The poet was called Hopkins you said?”

“Yes,” she nodded, then enunciated each part of the poet’s name quite clearly: “Gerard. Manley. Hopkins.”

The chimes in Thursday’s memory were beginning to clang. He was in Morse’s bedroom again. He was looking at the clothes strewn about the room, the dirty dishes, the record player, the books left open on every flat surface…

“Hopkins,” he whispered. “What’s the poem?” he said, frowning at her. “Can you recite it for me?”

She looked a little surprised at the request, but no poetry professor had ever declined to perform poetry for an interested audience. Her voice was clear and confident as she recited:

“ _My aspens dear, whose airy cages quelled/ Quelled or quenched in leaves the leaping sun, / All felled, felled, are all felled; / Of a fresh and following folded rank / Not spared not one – ”_

“Wait, wait,” he broke in. He pulled out his wallet and removed the music recital programme he had found in Morse’s jacket pocket. “ _All felled, felled, are all felled_ ,” he read from it, then held it out to her. “He wrote out that part of the poem here. And look.” He flattened it open to the random series of numbers and letters that had flummoxed him. “There,” he said, pointing. “Does this mean anything to you?”

“Oh yes, MS 30305 - 30306. I wrote that for him.”

“You wrote it?” said Thursday eagerly. “What does it mean?”

“I can’t see that it would help you any – ”

“Please.”

“Well, it’s a shelf mark,” she said, but seeing his uncomprehending look, she explained: “It’s the Bodleian Library’s reference number for where to find Gerard Manley Hopkins’s original drafts of ‘The Binsey Poplars.’ Morse told me he wanted to see them for himself, and I happened to have the shelf marks from some past research of mine. If you show those numbers to a special collections librarian at the Bodleian, she’ll fetch you out a box with all the materials on that shelf.”

“That’s all? Just…poetry?”

Her brow wrinkled. “I can see I’ve disappointed you.”

“No, no, I’d just hoped…” He made a futile gesture and sighed, the words eluding him. “Well, I suppose I’d just hoped for an answer. For ‘x marks the spot.’”

“And instead of treasure, you found nothing but a rabbit hole?”

“Something like that.” He sank back in his seat.

The professor’s pale blue eyes were fixed on his face, her frizz of gray hair like a halo. She was studying him shrewdly with one hand resting on Raleigh’s solid, faithful head. “You’ll get to the bottom of this, Inspector. You’ve followed him this far.” And she quoted softly: “ _It is a wise father that knows his own child_.”

A sudden twist of grief contracted the muscles around the old copper’s heart. He closed his eyes, and his head sank humbly on his shoulders. “What kind of father would let this happen?” he demanded. “I failed him.”

“Oh, Inspector, you mustn’t say that…”

“He was supposed to be a scholar,” said Thursday, voice thick. “A professor. A poet. Not down in the muck, pawed at and manhandled by all the darkness and danger in this world. I never should have let him go on. I should have put a stop to it years ago.”

 _I don’t need protecting_ , _sir_. The boy’s pale face was there in front of him, against the backdrop of a darkened pub. They had been sitting around a hearth much like the one he sat by now. He remembered the defiant gleam in the boy’s eyes, the light of the fire golden and rosy on his cheeks.

 _Don’t you?_ he had said.

The professor put her hand briefly over Thursday’s – a tacit apology for all that she could not console. Then she stood and made herself busy with wrapping up a piece of Christmas cake for the detective to take with him: a waxed paper package, tied up with string and shoved with clumsy kindness into his hands. “For good luck,” she said, and tried to smile.

Thursday gave her his card and wrote his home number on it, insisting she call day or night if the mysterious intruders appeared on her land again. If she remembered anything more, she was to get in touch right away.

“I wish I could have been more helpful,” she said, and there were tears in the old woman’s eyes. “You’ll tell me how your young sergeant gets on, won’t you? I’ll be thinking of him.”

Thursday promised that he would. He patted Raleigh on the head, and wished the professor good night, opening the door out into the paddock as the icy night air rushed in. He took a few crunching steps on the gravel.

“Inspector,” the professor called out suddenly. She was backlit in the doorway, framed in a rectangle of warm light as he stood in the cold dark. “I’ve remembered something. But I don’t quite understand it.”

“What is it?”

“I asked Morse what brought him back here to my farm,” she said. “Why he had come back after so much time had passed since the fire.”

“And?”

“He said…” She paused for a moment, trying to remember his exact words: “He kind of smiled to himself and said: ‘It’s because I’m a good detective – but a poor policeman.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: a tombstone in the farmland


	12. Miss Frazil

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Strong language.

Christmas season in London is a magical thing. She had always loved it as a girl: the gold and garland shop windows of Oxford Street, the lighted trees of Covent Garden, the sharp excitement and the air of anticipation. Shoppers carried bursting paper bags as they hurried through the rain, and carol singers sang by firelight in the squares. But this year Miss Frazil glimpsed these things only through the rain-streaked window of a black cab as Christmas lights cast the shadows of raindrops onto her face.

She checked in to a cheap hotel in Bloomsbury. Not five minutes later, there was a soft knock at the door and a man wearing the dark, discreet clothing of British intelligence handed her a fat envelope. She lifted the flap to see that it contained a set of official permissions for Miss Dorothea Frazil to visit Her Majesty’s Royal Prison Petworth on December 24th at 9am sharp. “Don’t be late,” said the man, tipping his hat, and then he melted discreetly back into the wet London night.

The hotel bill would later show that Miss Frazil made two phone calls after that: the first was to Cowley Station, leaving yet another message for Fred Thursday to call her back as soon as he could. The second was to the Radcliffe Infirmary.

“Right,” she said, nodding and nodding, as if accepting the nurse’s report politely made it any easier to hear. “I – I understand it’s not to be expected yet. But are the doctors hopeful at least? And what does ‘probable post-traumatic visual loss’ mean exactly?” She nodded and nodded again, coiling the telephone cord around her hand as she listened – tightly enough to leave a livid mark on her skin by the time she replaced the phone in the cradle.

The next morning, the tired and anxious reporter gulped an acidic cup of coffee and set out earlier than planned. The early start was quickly proven essential – Petworth Prison was much farther south of the Thames than she anticipated, and the cockney driver she hired at Waterloo found himself in the unfamiliar position of having to wait for herds of sheep to cross the lane before he could continue on. The sun rose over frosted, fallow gardens as they drove, passing sleeping villages of thatch and flint, and revealing a countryside both soft and wet in its winter slumber. 

It was very nearly nine o’clock when she finally spied the prison rising like a great gray tombstone over the farmland. It had barbed wire fencing and turreted watchtowers that made it seem like a forgotten relic of the Second World War, belligerently continuing on in the face of peace and prosperity.

“Are you sure you want to go in there, Miss?” asked the driver. His eyes had gone wide as he saw two uniformed guards with an Alsatian Shepherd making their way over to the idling car.

Miss Frazil felt the leaden weight of dread forming in her stomach, and for the first time she wondered whether this scheme of hers might not actually be quite mad. She took a deep breath. “You can let me out here,” she said, and hurriedly got her papers in order. “Go and wait for me at the nearest pub. I’ll double your fee if you can circle back here every hour. Just _don’t_ for the love of God go back to London without me.”

In the nearly thirty years of her career in journalism, Dorothea Frazil had never visited a prison like this one. Only murderers and gangsters and psychopaths were caged within its walls, and this dangerous burden could be felt in the suffocating tension that hung as thickly in the air as the stinging scent of bleach. The sounds of the imprisoned population could be heard as dissonant echoes – like wailing ghosts – as men shouted and argued from far off cells. Guards were armed not only with truncheons but with pistols, a fact she noticed out of the corners of her eyes, barely daring to turn her head as two uniformed guards led her down long fluorescent white corridors.

Each time they stopped at a checkpoint to review her papers, Miss Frazil held her breath. But each time, Professor Paschal’s connections to Special Branch proved not only legitimate, but overawing. “Please inform the deputy warden that his presence is required immediately in Visitation Room A,” said one senior guard to a subordinate as he reviewed the papers. “I’ll take this lady there myself.”

The guard ushered her into a small room. Like gazing into a dystopian looking glass, Miss Frazil saw that the room was symmetrical. On either side of thick steel bars, there was a door and a chair: freedom and incarceration looked largely the same.

“I need to confer with my colleague. Wait here a moment,” said the guard, and closed and locked the door. 

In the ringing silence that followed, Miss Frazil couldn’t help but give a soft, half-mad little laugh. She had put an awful lot of effort into getting herself into a maximum security prison, and now here she was, locked in, where nobody knew to find her, and she wondered mordantly if they would simply throw away the key.

The reporter was more relieved than she cared to admit that it was only a few moments before the door was unlocked again. In addition to the uniformed guard, a smiling man in a burgundy Dandie Fashions three-piece suit and thick, modish glasses suddenly appeared in the room, reaching out to shake her hand. “Miss Frazil, how do you do?” he said in plummy accents. “My name is Robert Hall, I’m the Deputy Warden.”

“How do you, Mr. Hall?” Miss Frazil looked him over with amazement. He seemed so out of place in that harsh setting of concrete and steel – it was like finding a peacock in the Underground.

“Officer Harmon tells me that you’ve requested to interview two of our prisoners, is that right?”

“That’s correct.”

“I’m afraid there’s some difficulty arranging that.”

Miss Frazil’s heart beat a little faster. “Oh?” she said calmly.

It was intriguing to see how the pleasant Mr. Hall planned to handle this, and it seemed that he would handle it with a smile. “Yes, I’m so sorry but it can’t be done today. I wish we’d been given more time to prepare. We generally require at least six months’ notice – “

“Six months! Dear me. It’s almost as if you don’t want anyone to have access – or perhaps I should say oversight?”

His smile didn’t falter. “This is a unique facility, Miss Frazil. The inmates in our custody are extremely dangerous. Proper plans must be made. Precautions must be taken. I’m sorry you’ve had a wasted trip.”

“Oh but I don’t intend to have a wasted trip,” she said, matching his smile.

Hall looked at her over the top of his fashionable spectacles, an unmistakable look of exasperation hardening his features. “I’m sorry, Miss Frazil, but it simply can’t be done. That’s final.”

“It’s in your interests to make this happen, Mr. Hall. After all, you wouldn’t want me to think any of your prisoners weren’t actually _here_ , now would you?”

He went quite still. “What an odd thing to say,” he said at last.

“Is it?” she said, blinking innocently. “Because from what I hear, it’s a perfectly apt question to ask at Petworth Prison.”

All color drained from his face. “We - we don’t care for facetiousness about such matters here - “

“I’m quite serious, I assure you.”

“This is outrageous,” he said faintly.

“I agree. And what’s more, my readers would agree.”

“W-where do you get your information?”

“Never mind that,” she said, waving the question away as one might wave away unnecessary pleasantries. “Let me be perfectly clear with you, Mr. Hall. What I write in my paper will depend on whether you can produce the prisoners I request within the next hour. I think we understand each other now, don’t we?”

Hall stared at her. She could see his shoulders rising and falling with each suppressed breath. He was trying with all his might to retain an appearance of imperturbable calm, but with her hunter’s instinct, Miss Frazil knew she had successfully backed her quarry into a corner.

Hall’s voice was low and tense: “Very well. Which prisoners do you want to see?”

“Cole and Peter Matthews.”

“Matthews!”

Something changed in his features. Miss Frazil could not quite read it, but he and the uniformed guard exchanged a brief, excited glance. “ _With me, Officer Harmon_ ,” said Hall, and without another word to the reporter, they were both gone.

Miss Frazil was left in silence, feeling uncomfortably like she had missed something. She began to pace, trying to reassure herself that she had accounted for all the pieces in the puzzle, but focusing her mind proved much harder than usual. There were too many things to mull over – Iain Ewell’s documents, Morse’s mysterious coded letter, the fact that Thursday was not returning her phone calls, the worrying news from the Radcliffe.

Thinking it might be easier to cogitate on paper, she sat down and began to write notes on the story, using her knee as a desk. _Revenge against Morse for Wessex Raid, or did he uncover new scheme? – What have Matthews Brothers been up to in Oxford since escape? – Who is complicit with their operations?_ Her fountain pen scratched briskly in the heavy silence.

Suddenly there was a shriek of metal, a jangle of keys, and the distant clank of chains. Miss Frazil jumped, whirling round to see that the door on the other side of the bars had opened. The deputy warden and Officer Harmon reappeared. “Alright, move along, and be quick about it,” shouted the officer, and the sound of the clanking chains grew louder.

To Miss Frazil’s reverberating shock, the heavily manacled figure of none other than Cole Matthews entered the visitation cell. He was dressed in the rough gray wool jumpsuit of a convict and looked very unwell: gray-skinned and with sunken cheeks and the remains of a black eye.

“Sit down and behave yourself,” ordered Officer Harmon, and he jabbed Matthews in the back with his truncheon to spur him forward. The prisoner took his seat with a grunt, and the warden chained his ankle manacles to a metal ring in the floor.

Hall walked up to the bars, and briefly studied Miss Frazil’s face. “Are you satisfied?” he said.

She stared at Cole Matthews, too stunned to reply.

“Peter Matthews is much too ill to be removed from the Infirmary Ward. I trust you don’t expect me to turf him out of bed for you?”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Miss Frazil through numb lips. She felt dazed, blindsided. But even in her stupor, the reporter was still able to observe that Hall was anxiously studying her reaction. There was truth in the story of Petworth’s escaped convicts, she realized – but she had aimed wide. She had missed her shot.

“Mr. Hall – “

“I’m not taking any questions. You have thirty minutes with this prisoner. Then I’m afraid our patience for this charade will have quite run out.”

Miss Frazil looked around the little cell, noting the smirk on Officer Harmon’s face from the other side of the steel bars. The collapse of her entire theory of events had sent her reeling, but her reporter’s instinct sat her back down in the chair, and her hands reached again for pen and notebook.

“Cole Matthews?” she said faintly.

The faded figure of the prisoner straightened a little. He looked up at her, resentment curdling his sallow features. “Who are you?”

“Dorothea Frazil of The Oxford Mail.”

“ _Oxford_ ,” he spat.

“What can you tell me about a prisoner escape from this institution?”

Matthews looked up sharply at Officer Harmon, then hung his head again. Harmon gave a sarcastic chuckle and said: “See? He doesn’t know about any such thing.”

“It happened last winter,” she pressed, ignoring him. “There’s no way something like that could be kept a secret in a place like this. Who was it who escaped, Cole?”

Cole Matthews said nothing.

Harmon and Hall were looking very smug.

Miss Frazil felt the heat of anger rising into her cheeks, and she took a deep breath to keep the flustered feelings at bay. “Very well. You won’t talk about it. Fine. What can you tell me about this place? Are you treated well here?”

More sullen silence.

“Where’s your brother?”

Matthews looked down. He did not answer.

“Has Peter really not been well?” she asked, feeling around for the right thread to pull. “He was seriously injured during your raid on the Wessex Bank, from what I remember. A place like this is hardly good for convalescing.”

She paused, waiting for him to interject, but Matthews gave her nothing.

The last time Miss Frazil had set eyes on the man, he was being led to a prisoner transport wagon outside Cowley Station. Fred Thursday, Jim Strange, and Morse had led him out together, along with a small band of uniformed constables with nightsticks at the ready. Matthews had been so cocky then. She remembered him twisting around like a snake to hiss some final abuse at Thursday. 

“It was Detective Inspector Fred Thursday who shot your brother, wasn’t it? Fred Thursday. Of Oxford City Police.”

Something dark moved like a shadow over Cole Matthews’s features. “No,” he said, voice low and rusty. “It was Thursday shot _me_.”

“Ah,” she said slowly.

His lips quivered. His face trembled with emotion. 

“So Fred Thursday is responsible for your being locked up," she said, turning the screw. "No love lost there, then?"

“That’s right,” he snarled, unable to hold it in any longer. “But I know that fucking two-faced _bastard_ is going to get what’s coming to him soon enough – ” The warden jabbed him in the back, and Matthews, with a hiss of wrath, fell silent.

“You think Fred Thursday has a punishment coming to him? Well,” she said quietly. “He’s certainly suffering now.”

Cole Matthews looked up. “What do you know about it?”

“Are we going to help each other, Cole? Tit for tat? Share information?”

The prisoner’s face puckered up unpleasantly, but she could see that she had firmly caught hold of his curiosity. His eyes flashed at her. “You first.”

“Someone’s attacked Thursday’s sergeant.”

“Which sergeant?”

“Tit for tat, remember. Who do you know that might want to hurt an Oxford City policeman?”

“Who _wouldn’t?”_

“You don’t have any associates left in Oxford who might’ve done it, then?”

“You’re a stupid cow, aren’t you?” he said, with a harsh laugh. “They’ve got every QC in London bringing in every sodding yob and geezer I’ve ever met in my life to testify against me. All you have to do is look ‘em up in the Old Bailey, but here you are wasting my time.”

“All your time is wasted time, Cole.”

“ _Fuck you_.”

She smirked. “You’re just a poor sad chump, aren’t you? Stuck in this cage while others are out and about, taking over _your_ turf, taking _your_ vengeance.”

“Which sergeant?” he snarled, so violently that spittle flew from his mouth. “Was it Morse? Tell me it was that smug little son of a bitch.”

“Only if you tell me who’s escaped this miserable fate of yours. You’re in here; they’re out there. Come on, Cole. This is your chance to even the score. Who’s in Oxford that’s dodging his sentence?”

“Fred fucking Thursday.”

“Come off it,” she said, rolling her eyes. “If you want to hear any more about what’s going on back home – “

“Philip Chandler,” he said suddenly.

“Who’s Philip Chandler?”

“A greedy little snake,” growled Matthews.

“And what’s this greedy little snake done?”

The prisoner sniffed. “We went in on a place called Home Farms together. Horses. Phil loves his goddamn nags – he says we could have some grand prix winners, start with a little property outside of town. All on the up and up, he says. He was cheating me and Pete from the off.”

“And he’s not one of your yobs called to the Old Bailey?”

“Not Phil,” he sneered. “All the poshos love Phil. Butter wouldn’t melt. But he’s just as crooked as the rest of us. He’s still out there sipping brandy - probably _with_ the goddamn QC – and here I am. Well. He’ll get what’s coming to him soon enough if what I hear about his _new friends_ is true. He’s in way over his shiny, well-groomed head.”

“What have you heard? What new friends?”

He looked at her sullenly, then cast an apprehensive glance up at Hall and Harmon – just as he had done when she had questioned him about the escape. He did not answer.

“Did this man Chandler attack Thursday’s sergeant, Cole?”

“And get his elegant hands dirty?” snorted Matthews. “Now it’s your turn, Miss Oxford Mail. Tit for tat. Which sergeant got attacked? The fat one – what’s his stupid fucking name – or was it Morse?”

She exhaled slowly. “Morse.”

A slow smile dawned on Cole Matthews’s face. “Is it bad?”

Miss Frazil’s stomach rebelled against the task, but she went on: “He’s in a coma. Doctors don’t know if he’ll pull through.”

The smile widened. “How’s dear old Fred taking it?”

She couldn’t bring herself to reply, but that was answer enough for Matthews. He sat back in his chair with a look of deep satisfaction. “Well, well. That’s something at least. I’ll have that to savor in my hours inside, eh? The little shit who saved Thursday’s daughter _and_ his precious reputation has got both feet in the grave for his trouble. Ain’t that just so pretty? The sins of the fathers…” He laughed again.

“Do you know who did it or don’t you?” she said, disgusted.

“If you don’t know who’s doing business on your own patch, I’m not going to tell you."

“Someone’s set up a new racket in Oxford with this Chandler character and they're the ones who hurt Morse? Is that it? Is it the men who escaped from here?” she demanded.

“This interview is over,” announced the deputy warden.

Officer Harmon stepped forward with his set of jangling keys.

Miss Frazil got up and ran to the steel bars, gripping them white-knuckled. “Cole – Cole, tell me what you know about what happened to Morse!” But the prisoner just laughed as Harmon unchained his manacles and hoisted him to his feet. He was being frog-marched to the door as Miss Frazil shouted: “What’s happening in Oxford? _Who hurt Morse_?”

Cole Matthews looked back at her with a grin. “You want to know who’s _really_ responsible for Morse? Fred Thursday, that’s who.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: like a bear in a cage


	13. DeBryn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: descriptions of violence.

Early on the morning of Christmas Eve, Doctor DeBryn stood contemplating a vignette of personal articles on a stainless steel trolley. One winter coat, one pair of trousers, one white dress shirt – all bloodstained, all ruined. There was a modest leather wallet that held nothing to fascinate, not even much money. A crumpled up linen handkerchief. A pair of well-worn shoes. Darned socks. A nub of pencil and a latchkey.

For such a complicated life, the remnants of it were certainly plain.

The pathologist catalogued and tagged every item, then folded the coat, jacket, and trousers and put them in a neat stack before wrapping it all in tidy, hospital-grade plastic. The result almost resembled a harmless bundle of dry cleaning. As if it were possible that it could all be laundered and the whole ordeal put firmly in the past – all the trauma and pain washed away, all the absence and danger set right, the man put whole and unbroken back into the world.

There was a sound of footsteps at the door that culminated in quiet – no knock. The doctor looked up. “Inspector,” he said.

Fred Thursday stood on the threshold looking like a castaway version of himself: a rumpled, wild-eyed stranger hung-over with grief. He had the stiff, pinched look of a man who had spent the entire night sitting up in a chair, and DeBryn knew that he must have come directly from his sergeant’s bedside. The strict ward sister’s heart, it seemed, had softened enough to let the old copper keep his vigil long past visiting hours.

“How is he this morning?” asked DeBryn.

Thursday’s voice was like a mile of bad road: “No change.”

DeBryn nodded, his gaze dropping down to the trolley. “It’ll take time.”

The detective made no reply to this anodyne sentiment. Instead he walked up to the evidence trolley and stood opposite DeBryn, looking down at the bare remnants of Morse’s last investigation. “Have the Kidlington men been to see you yet? Tucker and Landrum?”

DeBryn shook his head. “They’ve been slow out of the gate. But they rang me up to say they’re picking up Morse’s things this morning.” He paused. “DI Tucker warned me quite sternly against speaking with you. He also asked me some strange questions.”

Thursday looked entirely unsurprised. “Such as?”

“Whether Morse is well-liked by his colleagues. Whether he has any vices. Whether he had been drinking the night of his attack.”

“What did you tell them?”

“The truth. That he had not been drinking. That he certainly has his ordinary vices – almost as many, in fact, as he has rare virtues.” His mouth drew out into a wry line: “As for ‘well-liked by his colleagues’ I admit to fibbing a little.”

Thursday’s cheek contracted in a pained semblance of a smile. He laid his palm on the neat stack of Morse’s clothes – briefly, a reflexive movement – then examined the other items. “This isn’t everything he had on him,” he said. 

“Ah.”

DeBryn hesitated. Then with a sigh, he turned and retrieved a last piece of evidence from where he’d placed it in a locked drawer, separated from Morse’s things. He set it down in front of the detective with the cold clatter of metal on metal. “The hospital cut these off before taking him into theater,” he said quietly.

The handcuffs were mangled. Lacking the keys, the hospital staff had severed not only the chain, but had snipped the bracelets themselves with bolt cutters in order to free Morse’s wrists. Thursday’s lip curled at the hateful remains, but he merely observed: “They’re police issue.”

“Morse’s own, perhaps?”

“He rarely carries cuffs,” said Thursday as he picked them up. He scowled at them before finally shaking his head. “They’re an old model. Before Morse’s time. I had a pair like this back in the Smoke.”

“Are there any still in circulation?”

Thursday met his eyes levelly. “Are coppers ever set in their ways?”

DeBryn raised his eyebrows in wry reply.

“Must be hundreds of these still out there though,” said Thursday. “And after all this time, not just coppers would have them either. Criminals. All sorts.”

“Not significant, then?”

“Can’t tell yet.” Thursday squinted. “Was this latchkey the only key he had on him?”

“Yes, it’s a key to his flat. Why?”

“Something bothering me,” said Thursday, frowning, but he did not elaborate. “What about Morse’s notebook? It’s not here.”

“It wasn’t brought in with him. Perhaps it was in his desk at Cowley? Tucker and Landrum would have it by now.”

But Thursday shook his head. “He’s always got it on him, scribbling away. Only natural, I suppose. For him to have a student’s habit.” Something about this thought caused a change somewhere behind his tired eyes, a flicker of something too tender to be allowed, and Thursday brusquely cleared his throat. “He knows better than to leave it lying about. Must have been taken off him, then,” he said, then rather more quietly: “During the beating.”

“Fred…”

The old copper’s eyes were pouched with exhaustion, and his gaze had abstracted somewhere in the middle distance. “We both know what I came to hear,” he said exhaustedly. “If you’re going to try to talk me out of it, save your breath.”

“Fred, I don’t think – ”

“ _Report_ , Doctor,” said the detective roughly. “I need your report.”

The neat little man in the Argyll jumper straightened up. His solemn, owlish eyes bestowed a long look of consideration on the older man. “Very well,” he said at last.

The pathologist then assumed his role as deliberately as a scientist puts on a lab coat. He turned and retrieved a clipboard of notes from his desk and began in impersonal, scientific tones: “You’re looking for at least three suspects. All physically quite large and powerful. Two men held the victim from behind, one inflicted the blows. A lateral dislocation of the right clavicle is likely related to the victim’s attempts to wrench free of his captors.”

Fred Thursday began to pace.

“In my opinion, the overall preponderance of injury on the victim’s right side suggests that the attacker was left hand dominant. The victim suffered a sustained beating at the hands of his assailants. Fractured ribs, ruptured spleen, lacerated kidney…”

“ _Go on_ ,” growled the detective.

“The jagged nature of the lacerations on the victim’s face indicates the attacker was wearing a ring. Based on the fact that the ring was on his left hand, I suggest that you’re looking for a wedding ring. With a small, faceted inset, most likely.”

“Could we trace the ring?”

“It’s possible,” said the doctor. “It will be distinctive.”

The detective continued to pace like a bear in a cage, agitated strides eating up the room.

“The attacker was clearly skilled with his fists. It’s likely that you’re looking for someone with at least passing knowledge of formal boxing technique, but certainly someone who is well versed in violence. In addition to the abdominal injuries, there were fractures to the maxilla, right orbital floor and ridge, and zygomatic arch – “

“The – the orbital…?”

“Skull fractures, Inspector. Complex fractures to the right eye socket and cheekbone.” Here the doctor’s scientific recitation faltered. He paused. He took a few moments to adjust his glasses ever so slightly. “It’s – it’s not possible to know at this stage. Impossible to say. But…due to the severity of the injuries, there is a high potential that Morse will be permanently blinded.”

Thursday involuntarily sucked in his breath. The pacing stopped.

DeBryn held his breath for a beat, then hurried on: “The victim also suffered multiple fractures of the metacarpals and proximal phalanges of the right hand. The nature of the fractures suggests his hand was struck by something heavy and somewhat sharp…I think, perhaps, it was slammed in a door. More than once. I can only surmise the purpose of inflicting such an injury was to – “

But Fred Thursday had turned away. He was leaning hard against the counter. His shoulders heaved as he dragged the back of his hand across his mouth and gave a low, queasy moan.

DeBryn took a step toward him. “Fred – ”

“I’m _all right_ , goddamn it.”

There was a tense silence as the inspector gathered his composure. When his ragged breathing had leveled out, he let go of the counter and paced a few random steps, his color returning from ashen depths.

But the doctor was not pleased. “I was afraid of this,” he said, his tone not unmixed with indignation as he shook his head at Thursday. “You’ve been pushing yourself much too hard, Inspector. You have not been taking proper care.”

Thursday had got out his handkerchief and was furtively dabbing at the perspiration on his upper lip. “I said I’m all right,” he said testily.

“ _Evidently_.”

“I didn’t come here for a lecture,” growled the detective. “I need to know what you know about that night. What you saw at my house. He hasn’t left me enough to go on otherwise – ”

“When did you last have a decent meal? Or a proper night’s sleep?”

Thursday gave a grumble of impatience. “ _Doctor_ – ”

“I can’t let this continue. You’re in no state to be investigating this case.”

“And leave it to Kidlington?” said Thursday with disgust.

“Be that as it may.”

“This is what I can do for him,” said Thursday. “ _It’s what I can do_.”

“I can’t help you, Fred,” said DeBryn, firm as bedrock. “I have as much of a duty to you as I do to Morse.”

“You’re talking to me of duty?” said the detective, very softly. There was a stormy pause in which his eyes glinted with dangerous emotion – then with sudden fury, he grabbed the bloodied, mangled remains of the handcuffs off the evidence trolley and thrust them accusingly in DeBryn’s face. “Morse is my sergeant. My _sergeant_. What _duty_ do I owe him?”

“Certainly not the last full measure,” said DeBryn stiffly. “Because Morse would never ask that. Least of all from you.”

A tremor of emotion vibrated through the detective. His hands balled into fists, but he said nothing.

DeBryn slowly exhaled, steeling himself. The pathologist had only ever glimpsed such moments from afar, obliquely – viewing them, as it were, from over Morse’s shoulder as the loyal detective sergeant put himself bodily between his Guv’nor and his Guv’nor’s worst instincts.

It was still Morse’s slim body between them even now, DeBryn knew, though it was with a cruel, twisted irony that seemed destined to spur the old copper beyond all restraint.

“I have eyes,” said DeBryn. “I can tell what you’ve been doing these last three days. What good does it do Morse for you to be out there taking Oxford apart, stone by stone, spire by spire, in search of the same trouble that found him?”

“You think I care about my safety?” Thursday bit out.

“ _No_ ,” said DeBryn, goaded into anger. “No, I don’t think you care about your safety. But there are people who care a great deal. Your daughter for one, Morse for another. What would they say to you now? Morse is going to need you more than ever when he wakes up – ”

“ _If_ he wakes up.”

The words had been grated out harshly, roughly – but they were the words of a man who wanted to lash himself just to feel the sting of his own worst fear. A rush of sorrow burst like a dam, and the old man took a breath that was both ragged and convulsive. “It’s been three days,” he said, hoarsely. “Three days. A beating like that…sometimes…” He let out a long, slow, shaky exhalation. “Who could hate the lad that much?”

“I don’t know,” said DeBryn, very quietly.

At that moment, there was a sound in the hallway – someone was whistling tunelessly, just a series of jarringly cheerful notes and the muffle of footprints. A harsh rap on the door followed, and two men were strolling into the mortuary. They were strangers to DeBryn – dark suits, dark raincoats slicked with rain, hands in pockets. But there was no mistaking their easy, lounging confidence for anything but the authority that comes with rank. “Good morning, gentlemen,” said one, coolly raising his eyebrows. “I hope I’m not interrupting?”

Thursday looked entirely thrown by this sudden arrival. He did not respond.

“You must be DI Tucker,” said DeByn, a little unnerved himself.

Detective Inspector Giles Tucker was a small dyspeptic-looking man of about fifty years of age, with a hardened face and thinning, slicked back hair. His hand was still cold from outside as he reached out to shake the pathologist’s proffered hand. “That’s right. I’m surprised to see you here, Fred,” he said, turning to Thursday. “I hope you’ll accept my best wishes for DS Morse’s full recovery?”

Thursday nodded wordlessly.

“We have some questions for the Doc here about Morse’s case,” said Tucker. “I trust it wouldn’t be too repetitive to ask them? Looks like you’ve already given a full report to Fred here.”

“I was just going,” said Thursday thickly.

“You really ought to be more careful, Fred. You’ve got the good doctor here in a bit of hot water, I’m afraid. He wasn’t supposed to share information with a civilian. And that’s what you are on this case. A civilian. That’s clearly understood, isn’t it?”

Thursday cast a dead-eyed glance in DeBryn’s direction, then tipped his hat lower over his face. “I’ll leave you to it,” he said.

“Just a moment,” said DeBryn, alarmed at how they had left their conversation, but Thursday was already passing through the mortuary doors, beyond his influence.

“There goes Old Fred,” said the sergeant with a chuckle, drawing the pathologist’s gimlet eye.

Unlike Thursday and Morse, it was clear to DeBryn that these two detectives were members of the old school of policing wherein the sergeant was larger, brawnier, and more aggressive than his Guv’nor. There was no doubt as to which one of this pair happily played the role of enforcer. Landrum’s nose – according to the pathologist’s educated eye – had been broken at least twice in his life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: pending inquiry


	14. Mr. Bright

“Goodness,” said the nurse. “What’s all this?”

Mr. Bright slid the record player onto the duty station desk. “I thought Morse would feel the benefit of some music. I’ve brought Vaughan Williams and some Holst. Nothing like good English music at Christmas, what?”

“I’m sure, sir,” said the young woman, nonplussed. The duty station had its own little record player that was at that moment playing Dean Martin Christmas songs, and the sentiment was, perhaps, a little lost on her. 

“Morse loves music, you see. I thought it might… Well. There you are.” He set a neat tote bag of records on the desk, patting it with distracted approval. His eyes blinked anxiously behind his thick spectacles. “I wonder if you could tell me why I saw no police guard at the entrance of the hospital? Has the Radcliffe asked them to be stationed elsewhere? To the ward itself, perhaps?”

“I think they’ve gone from the hospital, sir.”

“Gone? No, no, I posted them here myself.”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you to keep your voice down, sir,” whispered the nurse, casting a glance at her patients around the room. She was very young, not more than twenty, and her round-cheeked face was fretful. “My patients have family coming to visit for the holiday tomorrow. They need their rest.”

“Fine. Fine.” The words were tapped out in hushed but brisk staccato. “But when did this happen? How long has DS Morse been left unguarded?”

“Just since this morning, I think. About the same time we got the orders for Mr. Morse’s new visitor restrictions…”

“Restrictions?”

“Mr. Morse isn’t to have visitors anymore, sir.”

Mr. Bright stared at her in dismay. “Whose orders are those?” he demanded.

The young woman opened her mouth to speak, then closed it again, cowed by the small elderly man’s sudden transformation into towering martinet. “I think you need to speak to Sister Mary,” she mumbled, and picked up the receiver, passing the word for the ward matron.

Mr. Bright clasped his hands behind his back and paced briskly back and forth, posture stiff as a wind-up toy. A string of paper cutout snowflakes had been hung along the duty station desk, and whenever he passed them, they wafted up and down in his wake. A few minutes later Sister Mary appeared. “Mr. Bright – ” she said, holding up her hands, evidently in anticipation of a barrage of complaints.

“What’s all this?” he barked. “Why can’t I see my officer?”

“I understand why you’re upset – ”

“Oh you understand, do you?” he said derisively. “You understand what? Do you _understand_ that the wellbeing of the men under my supervision is my sacred responsibility?”

“Of course I do, sir. When it comes to Morse, that is a responsibility that we both share.”

The nurse’s self-possessed authority soothed Mr. Bright’s terrier instincts. He dipped his head in tacit apology and began again, though his words still vibrated with barely suppressed agitation. “Detective Sergeant Morse is in a very precarious state. I simply must have the ability to check on his welfare.”

“I agree with you,” she said, surprising him. “But the visitor restrictions are not handed down from Morse’s doctors. They’ve come directly from the police.”

Mr. Bright was brought up short.

“The order came down this morning,” she went on. “From Assistant Chief Constable Morton.”

“Morton?” said Mr. Bright. “What’s it to do with him? What reason did he give?”

Sister Mary glanced sharply at the young nurse, who had been observing their conversation with frank curiosity. “Sign yourself out, Clara. It’s time for your tea break. There’s a good girl.”

The girl’s face fell at finding her inquisitiveness snuffed out so unceremoniously, but Mr. Bright could see that the matron’s word was law on the ward, and the girl soon stumped off for an unusually long afternoon tea break.

When they were alone, Sister Mary turned the volume up on the Dean Martin Christmas album and cast a wary look to make sure none of her patients were listening. She turned back to Mr. Bright, speaking quickly: “Mr. Morton and DI Tucker were here this morning. They said that the guard was ‘a waste of the constabulary’s resources.’ Morton called Morse’s doctors and the ward matrons into a meeting and said that Morse was to have no more visitors ‘pending inquiry.’”

“ _Pending inquiry_?”

The nurse sighed heavily. The lines of her mouth were drawn down at the corners. “That’s right. Pending inquiry. They said to be quite strict. I don’t mind telling you that I didn’t care for the way they were talking about the boy. The poor lamb. Weak as he is…” She shook her head. “I didn’t care for it one bit.”

Mr. Bright felt a knife-twist of dismay somewhere near his heart. “Can you take me to see him? Right now?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Bright. I can’t do that.”

“I won’t stay long. A moment. Please, just a moment.”

The nurse had a tender face: abundant smile lines and large gray eyes with wispy brows that seemed best suited for cheerfulness – the sort of woman who had snapshots of fat cats and smiling grandchildren on her desk. But at the moment, she looked sincerely pained. “I’m sympathetic. I truly am. But it’s more than my job’s worth and I’ve already broken their rules once today…”

“Yes…yes…well. You must do your duty, and I must do mine…” He was already distracted, thinking of how in the world he was going to tell Fred Thursday he wouldn’t be permitted to see his young sergeant. Morse would have to spend Christmas Day alone on the ward, devastated in body and broken in mind – friendless in perhaps the last, fading hours of his lonely young life.

“ _Pending inquiry_ ,” said Mr. Bright aloud, the words sour in his mouth. “Do they intend to libel the boy as well as disown him? Fiends. _Cowards_.”

“The poor lamb,” she said again, softly.

Shaken, distracted, Mr. Bright managed to thank the nurse for her kindness in explaining the situation to him. “And – and for taking such excellent care of Morse, as I know you are,” he said, in his reedy voice. “Your good offices are more important than ever, it seems. You’ll see about the records, perhaps, eh? I know it seems silly, but I thought it might…”

“Yes, Mr. Bright.” She smiled kindly. “I’ll see to the records. I promise you. You and Fred both.”

He nodded and turned to go, then seemed to remember something. “You said – you said you bent the rules once already today. What did you mean?”

“Oh, yes I did say that, didn’t I? It was for Morse’s sister.”

“His sister?”

“Yes. I simply couldn’t turn her away. She wanted to sit with him and hold his hand for a few minutes. She was trying so hard not to cry, poor thing.”

“His sister…” said Mr. Bright again.

“Yes, that’s right. She told me her name was Joan.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the teacher's pet's chair


	15. Strange

Jim Strange had never visited the Thursday home in anything but the role of interloper: wiping his feet on the welcome mat, bumping into china cabinets and setting them at a rattle, accepting polite offers of tea and toast when he probably ought to have turned them down. Strange had always been on the outside looking in – an unusual sensation for a man who’d always had a knack for ingratiating himself. But with this particular home, it had been his irritable, angular, pale, and aloof colleague who had improbably found his way into the embrace of its routines, its clockwork, its beating heart.

It was impossible not to have Morse at the forefront of his mind as Strange pulled up in front of the Thursday home in a gray and mizzling rain. Lights out, locked up, the family scattered, and Morse lost somewhere between this world and the one beyond it – the home’s beating heart had gone hushed and cold.

With a deep sigh, the good sergeant hefted himself out of the car and hunched his shoulders against the cold sting of rain. He fished in his pocket for Thursday’s latchkey – still tied up with a paper evidence tag with DS Landrum’s handwriting on it – and let himself into a foyer that was as cold as the grave. He tried to turn on the light, but the electricity seemed to be out. A blown fuse, no doubt – the Scene of Crime report had mentioned the power being out, but as the winter afternoon afforded him just enough light to see by, this posed no hardship.

He wandered around. On the living room coffee table there was an ashtray full of still-fragrant pipe ash and a mug of cold tea, now turned to green mold. There was a framed picture of Sam Thursday in his uniform that had pride of place near the television. Several sheets of damp stationery and a pair of cheery Christmas cards had fallen off the credenza in the dining room. He picked them up and squared them away. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for. Bedrooms, living room, kitchen, dining room – nothing seemed very amiss. A bit untidy perhaps, not like Win Thursday usually kept it, but not at all like the site of a brutal crime.

There was a thin creaking whine of the slowly opening front door. Ears caught by it, Strange doubled back into the foyer and saw a familiar figure with a pipe and hat framed in the rectangle of faded winter light.

“Sir,” said Strange. “What are you doing here?”

“Still my house, last I checked,” came Thursday’s low rumble from around a pipe stem.

Strange squinted at the detective inspector warily, not exactly sure which version of the Old Man had just arrived on the doorstep. Protective father, clear-eyed copper, pragmatic veteran – as firmly defined as these facets of his character were, there had been times when they all suddenly gave way to a darker, more unpredictable figure. “Yes, of course, sir,” said the sergeant carefully. “Only…the investigating officer hasn’t given you the all clear to return yet.”

Oddly, Thursday had been standing stock still as Strange spoke, peering at the door lock in an attitude of careful examination. But he looked up sharply at that, eyes glinting as he took the pipe from his mouth. “Never expected the door to be wide open,” he said pointedly. “Hardly keeping your crime scene secured, Sergeant.”

Strange swallowed. “Yes, sir.”

“It’s Christmas Eve,” said Thursday, expelling the words on a sigh. “I’ve just gone twelve rounds with DeBryn, and I’d like my house back. What are _you_ doing here, Jim?”

The sergeant put his hands in his pockets and looked down at his feet, shuffling them a bit. “Well. Scene of Crime report was a bit thin. Thought I’d have myself a butcher’s about the place.” He hesitated a moment, then blurted out what was on his mind anyway: “Nothing about this case is sitting right.”

There was a beat of silence from the man in the doorway. “No,” he agreed slowly. “Nothing about this is right.”

Extending an arm to the door handle, the detective inspector nodded at Strange to come take a look. Puzzled, Strange obeyed. At first he saw nothing, but leaning in closer, his honest face wrinkled up in surprise as he finally noticed the grayish, opalescent sheen around the keyhole.

“I’ll be damned,” he said, blinking. “Graphite powder. Someone’s picked the lock.”

“No matter how many times my Win told Morse he should just come in and make himself at home, he would never accept a key. Always stood upon ceremony. Always rang the bell.”

“So...you guessed the lock had been picked?”

“I came here half-thinking that it must have been. But damned if I can see how any of this fits together.”

“I wish Morse were here,” said Strange with feeling. He was a little surprised at just how much he meant it.

Thursday made no reply to that, and stood for a moment draped in a silence as heavy as a shroud. His face was a little obscured by the tobacco smoke that hung, thick and visible, in gently expanding curls around his head. Strange watched him reach up an age-spotted hand to pull off his hat, and there was a slight but noticeable tremor to his movements.

To say the Old Man looked exhausted didn’t even touch it. 

“I meant it, sir,” said Strange with a surge of warmhearted loyalty to the man. “What I said the other day. That I’d help you if I could.”

”You’re sure you mean that?”

”Absolutely.”

Thursday met his eye then. “Know what Morse and I would do now? If he were here?”

“What’s that, sir?”

Thursday nodded his head toward the dining room. “Have a drink and talk it over.”

Strange took a seat in a creaking knock-off Chippendale at the dining room table, feeling a bit like the dunce who’s been moved to the teacher’s pet’s chair. Thursday went around the table by way of the window, pausing to grunt with disapproval at the sash – it had been left open, leaving a film of ice on the sill. He frowned. “Didn’t bother dusting for prints, I see.” He shut the window with a disapproving bang.

“Can’t say this investigation has impressed me overmuch, sir,” said Strange with a sniff.

“No?”

It was not a question so much as a deeply sarcastic rhetorical snort, and Strange shrank a little. “You knew,” he said quietly. “You knew from the start how it would be.”

Thursday’s lip curled. “Morse has always been a thorn in Division’s side, always _will be_ a thorn in their side, long as he lives. They’ll be glad of a chance to be rid of him. They’ll close the case and call it good. Give them half a chance, and they’ll bury Morse’s good name along with his body.”

Strange flinched.

“Shocked you, have I?” said Thursday heavily. “You get to a certain age, you see it all. More than once, some of it.” He poured two shots of scotch from a cut-glass decanter. The room still smelled of winter, and the biting scent of alcohol and peat rushed into it like a tide, as warming as it was bracing.

“How is he?” asked Strange. “I’ve heard…well…”

Thursday slid the scotch toward the sergeant with more force than necessary, the amber sloshing around in the glass. “What can you tell me, Jim,” he said gruffly.

Strange sat up a little straighter. “Well, to start with, I have a report from one of the PCs that Morse was in the Post Office on the Broad around two o’clock on Monday.”

Thursday frowned a little, nodding. “I know he went to a recital at Exeter around then – that’s just around the corner from there. Come to think, the witness at Exeter saw him carrying papers with him, some kind of file folder. Did he post anything?”

“According to the postal clerk, yes. He posted something express service to The London Daily Star.”

Thursday leaned back in his chair and took a sip of his scotch. “Damned if I can make anything of that. What else?”

“That’s the only report we’ve been able to find of him on Monday. On Tuesday, the day of the attack, PC Thomas was the last one to speak to Morse at the station. It was early, just as the day shift was starting. He said Morse sent him off to Doctor DeBryn’s with a message. Seems that Morse wanted the Doc to pull the post-mortem records of some men who died last year. Out near Godstow.”

“Home Farms,” said Thursday.

Strange blinked. “How’d you know that, sir?”

“Albert Norris, the newsagent on the High. He told me Morse had been interested in the place. What else?”

“We know that Morse checked out a Jaguar from the Cowley Station vehicle pool Tuesday morning, but we’ve no idea where that car might be now. We’ve looked all over Oxford – focusing on your neighborhood, sir – but it hasn’t turned up yet. Been keeping an eye on garages and chop shops as well, but no joy. Maybe it’s at this Home Farms?”

“Can't be. I searched that place myself yesterday.” Thursday rubbed at his eye. “Are you sure about the car? DeBryn says Morse only had a key to his own flat on him at the time of the assault. No car keys.”

“It’s definitely Morse’s scrawl on the sign out log. I saw that for myself, and the keys aren’t in the key press. Not sure how we can lose one tonne of steel and rubber.” He shook his head in frustration. “His trail’s as cold as ice. If you’d told me Morse had tripped down the steps of the station and headfirst into oblivion, I’d almost believe you.”

Thursday grunted. His eyes had gone a little hazy, his mouth puckering as he savoured a mouthful of whiskey. “Why would Morse come here – _on foot_ , no less – knowing that he had no way to get into the house? What did he think he was going to do? Wait on the doorstep like an empty milk bottle? He’d have frozen in ten minutes, skinny as he is.”

“Do you think it could have been Morse who picked the lock, sir?”

Thursday turned a very caustic eye in the sergeant’s direction. “You think he walked all the way here with a plan of casually picking the lock to my home?”

“I s’pose not,” mumbled Strange, chastened.

They fell into silence as Thursday puffed at his pipe, lost in thought, and Strange reflected humbly that his Guv’nor usually had a much more talented partner for this sort of back-and-forth.

At last Thursday took the pipe from his mouth. “What if we’ve had all this wrong from the off?” he said. “We’ve assumed Morse came here looking for me, wanting to tell me something. His attackers followed him here and ambushed him. But what if that’s all wrong? What if Morse didn’t come here at all?”

“Sir?”

“You said yourself Morse left the station, got in the Jag, and wasn’t seen again that day. Maybe because he was picked up by these villains much earlier than we thought.”

Strange shook his head. “But, sir, how did he get _here_ \- ?”

“That’s what I’m driving at, Jim. That’s just it. They didn’t follow Morse here – they _brought_ him here.”

Strange stared at him. 

Thursday hurried on, the logic of it propelling him forward: “You said yourself Scene of Crime report was a bit thin. No blood, right? No furniture knocked about? We’ve been happy to blame Tucker’s shabby, half-arsed investigation, but what if that much, at least, was perfectly true?”

“But, sir – “

“My neighbors, too. They didn’t see or hear anything, which I chalked up to the oncoming snow and the early darkness. Hell, I even cursed them all for selfish beings. Damned the whole bleeding lot of them for letting a young man get thrashed within an inch of his life while they watched telly, safe and snug. But what if there was nothing much to notice? No sound of a struggle at all?”

“You think the attack happened somewhere else?”

Thursday’s face darkened. “It happened somewhere else, alright. Wherever the Jag is parked, maybe. Then Morse was brought back here. Unconscious. The lock was picked. And Morse was left here to die.”

“But, sir,” said Strange, aghast. “But – blimey, that would mean – “

“That would mean that whoever did this wanted very much for me to come home from London to find my sergeant beaten to death in my own home.”

Jim Strange’s face was a mask of horror. “Good God, sir…”

The phone rang, startling them both.

"The Radcliffe..." breathed Thursday. 

He got up stiffly from his chair, and rushed to the receiver, snatching it up with shaking hands. "Hello? Hello?" 

Strange watched in suspense as Thursday's expression changed from alarm to confusion, finally deepening into angry determination. "I'll be right there," he said gruffly. "Do you hear? I'll be right there. Hold tight and lock the doors."

"Who was that, sir?" cried Strange as Thursday slammed down the phone.

"Get in the car," growled Thursday, making for the door. "We're going to Home Farms."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: as solidly black as the square of a chessboard


	16. Thursday

Mizzling rain became a raging downpour as they sped out of Oxford. Small villages blurred past. The heater fogged the windows and suffocated their vision as they navigated country lanes that had been churned to pudding by the relentless freeze-and-thaw cycle of an English winter. Thursday wiped the fog from the windscreen with abrupt zig-zag swipes of his palm, leaving the glass weeping streaks of condensation. “Take a left here – _here_ ,” he said sharply, and Strange jerked the wheel down a private road.

They turned into the paddock of Blair Farm, and Fred Thursday’s stomach dropped like a stone.

Inky, rolling gusts of smoke billowed out of the barn’s wide open doors like curling black banners. The roof was steaming as heat met rain, the air thick and hazy grey: the colour of smoke painted in watercolour.

Strange pulled the Jag up roughly, sending an arc of wet gravel flying outward. Before the chassis had even come to a full stop, Thursday had thrown open the door and launched himself out. “Professor? Professor!” he shouted through the deluge, running for the open doors as black smoke stretched its long sooty fingers. There was no answering cry, and Thursday – coughing, eyes stinging – peered frantic into the acrid gloom. He could hear the crackling of flames somewhere within, though the glow of it was smothered in black. Rain pelted down, drowning his voice as he shouted. He pulled the handkerchief from his pocket and held it over his nose. “Professor!” he shouted again, and took a step into the burning building.

There was a scream. A keening, otherworldly wail of fear from the back of the smoke-curdled barn. A horse was lost somewhere in the burning blackness, terrified and shrieking, the sound of it strangely human. The detective moved toward it, every protective instinct in his body active and searching.

“Sir! Sir! _Inspector Thursday_!”

Thursday could hear Strange’s increasing desperation behind him, but the sergeant was already lost behind a curtain of smoke. Thursday waded further into the barn, following the sound of the wailing animal, a hand out blindly feeling in front of him. The very air was burning his lungs. “Professor!” he gasped. 

“I’m here – I’m here!” came the half-suffocated answer, followed by a convulsive cough.

There was a sound of pawing hooves, the feeling of a powerful disturbance in the smoke ahead of him, then a massive ember-coloured creature threw a bony shoulder into his body. Stunned by the blow, Thursday was nearly knocked off his feet, but the professor caught hold of his sleeve and reeled him in toward her. Her hands guided his to the horse’s lead. “I have her blindfolded. Pull her – pull her – she’s too frightened to go!”

The detective pulled, but the horse immediately lurched back, the shock of her immense strength vibrating up Thursday’s arm. Head spinning, starved of air, Thursday wheezed hard as he heaved again. Bits of flaming straw were snowing down from the loft above them. His sleeves were smouldering. Somewhere nearby the professor coughed feebly, and Thursday knew that they had mere seconds before they would both sink into unconsciousness in the undertow of smoke. 

He thought suddenly of Home Farms. Of four charred bodies. _Felled, felled are all felled_ , whispered a voice in his mind, _not spared not one_...

All at once another pair of hands joined his on the horse’s lead. Jim Strange had made his way to them at last. The two men pulled together, putting all their combined weight into it, and this time the horse followed.

They led her blindly through the black as they leaned toward the sound of rain, which grew every step in strength like a thunderous ovation at the end of a play. At last the smothering veil of smoke parted and water greeted them in sheets. They stumbled with stinging, blinded eyes into the paddock, coughing and hacking. Thursday turned to see the professor stagger out after them, seemingly about to swoon. Instead, she motioned emphatically for the horse’s lead. 

The two men trailed the professor through the distortion of rain as she led the mare into a neighboring field. Two horses were already out there, running in circles as Raleigh the sheepdog chased after them with a volley of percussive, ineffectual barks. The professor pulled the blindfold from the ember-coloured horse’s eyes and let go of her bridle, allowing her to fly to her fellows like a bird rejoining its flock.

“Are you alright?” wheezed Thursday, coming up beside her.

The professor hacked a few rough coughs before answering. “ _Quite_.”

“You’re sure?”

“We got all the horses out,” she croaked. “That’s what matters.”

“Have you called the fire brigade?” asked Strange.

In the aftermath of the ordeal, the elderly professor was trembling and shaken, bird-like and small. But the withering glance she bestowed on Strange was not one shade less caustic than her usual acuity. She then looked in sharp query to Thursday.

“He’s one of my officers,” explained the detective inspector. “He’s all right, I promise you.”

Clearly unconvinced, the professor leveled another assessing look in the sergeant’s direction. “Of course I’ve called them, slow and good-for-nothing though they may be. The rain will make sure it won’t spread meanwhile. The fire brigade may come at its leisure.” She waved an arm in the direction of the smoking barn with sarcastic hospitality.

The diminutive force that was Professor Viola Blair began to march toward her cottage, shouting at Raleigh as she went to stop being a _bloody fool_ and come along. Her Wellington boots sloshed and sucked at the mud, but she still made faster headway than the two city detectives in their brogues.

At last the three sodden figures trooped into the cottage’s kitchen. It was every bit as warm and cluttered as it had been two days previously. Raleigh shook himself, unhelpfully.

“Are you really all right?” demanded Thursday.

“Perfectly,” said Professor Blair, voice clipped, barely looking at them. “You two wait here. I need to ring my neighbour. Make arrangements for the girls.”

She left the two of them behind to drip on the floorboards. The adrenaline of the moment was evaporating like steam, leaving behind only prickly irascibility for Thursday and bewilderment for Jim Strange. The sergeant kept casting furtive glances in his Guv’nor’s direction, hoping for some kind of hint or explanation. Thursday had given him only the barest outline of his dealings with the Professor during their hell-for-leather ride to the farm, and the DI’s flinty profile hardly lent itself to inquiries now.

Strange consoled himself by noisily blowing all the soot out of his nasal passages into a white handkerchief.

A moment later the old woman returned, still wearing her sopping mackintosh. She seemed smaller and frailer now, the business of the aftermath all taken care of. “My neighbour is coming with a horse box,” she announced in a subdued voice. “He’s going to collect the horses for me. They’ll spend the night at his barn. That’s all I can do for now.”

“How did it start?” demanded Thursday.

“I think you know the answer to that as well as I do, Inspector.” The professor took off her sodden beret and whipped it to the floor. “Damn those men. _Damn them_. They could have killed my girls.”

“And yourself into the bargain,” growled Thursday. “Or don’t you rate a mention? Didn’t I tell you to hold tight and wait for us?”

She gave him a look that could cut glass. “As if I could stand by and watch it happen.”

“What happened out there? Start at the beginning.”

She waved an abrupt hand in the direction of the barn. “I saw those villains coming out of the kitchen garden. They’ve never come out so brazenly in broad daylight before. I was afraid they really meant to do some mischief this time. That’s when I called you.”

Thursday grunted.

“After I got off the phone, I watched out the window to see where they’d gone – that’s when I saw the smoke coming from the barn. I turned the horses loose right away – except for Cordelia, she was too frightened and wouldn’t leave her stall…”

The old copper made a noise of impatience.

“You may tut at me, Inspector, but I was no more going to leave her behind than you would leave one of your officers,” she said, looking him full in the face. “You have yours to look after. I have mine.”

Thursday flinched, knowing that there was more fact in what she said than she could ever have known. He had once followed Morse into a burning theatre, then half-carried the swooning detective sergeant out to the fresh air so he could cough up his tender lungs on the pavement. To fetch the boy out or die trying had seemed his only two options. He had sincerely never considered a third.

“You heard my Cordelia in that burning barn,” said the professor, pressing home her point. “Could you have stood by and listened to that? It’s an awful sound, a dying horse. _Awful_.”

“Thank God for this rain,” put in Strange quietly. “Or else the whole thing would surely have gone up like a tinderbox, and there wouldn’t have been time to help you.”

“Yes. Had it been a summer’s day…” whispered the professor.

“Like Home Farms,” said Thursday, finishing the thought.

Tears pooled suddenly in the professor’s reddened eyes. “Poor Cormac,” she said, voice thick. “Those poor boys…” She dashed the tears away and cleared her throat. “Cordelia and I had a different fate. Thanks to you two. Ugh, such foolish blubbing,” she scolded herself, but the tears began to fall in earnest.

Thursday put a consolingly heavy hand on the older woman’s shoulder. “Is there anything we can do for you? Any way we can help?”

“You can help by finding out what the _bloody hell_ is going on.” She wiped her eyes and sniffed.

A muscle tightened in the old copper’s jaw. It was mortifying to all his sensibilities as a policeman that he had made so little progress on her case. He had been preoccupied with Morse, it was true, but that would hardly have impressed his bagman as a reasonable excuse. A vivid image of the boy was summoned to the forefront of his mind: standing solemn like the personification of his conscience. Morse’s sharp-angled shoulders were set at attention, hands clasped behind his back, his face fixed in pale disappointment as he looked at Thursday. He, in his brilliance, had known the mystery of Blair Farm. All Thursday had to do was follow, but he had failed even in that.

Thursday realized that Strange was looking at him, face wrinkled with concern. “Sir? What d’you reckon?”

“Right,” said Thursday heavily. “Let’s take a look around. Maybe these villains left something behind.” It seemed as good an idea as any. “Professor, why don’t you stay here and warm up – “

“Damned if I’ll take tea in the pavilion while you two trudge about in the cold. I’m coming with you,” she said, and there was no argument.

Outside, they found that the rain had petered into a mild shower, its wrath spent. The barn was burning in earnest now: flames leapt from the hayloft, and smoke – now unimpeded by rain – rose in a high column above the property. The professor sniffled quietly at the sight of it.

The two detectives split up to walk around the barn, taking care to give it plenty of room – they could hear the roar of flames and the commotion of timbers falling inside, and they knew that once the barn was hollowed out, chimney-like, the whole thing was likely to come crashing down.

“Found nothing, sir,” said Strange, raising his voice above the din as he met his boss on the other side. “If they set the place ablaze, they must have started it inside. It’s up to the fire marshal now.”

Thursday turned to the professor. “Where did you say you saw those men?”

“I saw them coming out of the kitchen garden,” she said, pointing. “Beyond those hedges. There’s a gate just there, you see.”

“Kitchen garden?” repeated Thursday. He rubbed his chin. The words had jarred something loose in his memory, but he couldn’t quite grasp what it was.

The garden was large – half an acre or so – and was walled in on all sides by a six-foot tall hedge of boxwoods. There was a crushed oyster-shell path down the middle that divided it with pleasing symmetry into east and west, with an ornate greenhouse in the bullseye center. There were mounds for the growing of beans, and sticks planted firmly in the mud for tender green vines to embrace as they climbed up from the earth in the spring. Beds of lush mud told of sleeping shallots, and the deep mud-spattered green of furled spinach leaves looked like the ears of earthbound rabbits.

Amid this dormant land, a splash of vibrant colour caught Thursday’s eye. It lay along the chalky stripe of footpath that led to the greenhouse. He went over and picked it up, unfolding what turned out to be a rag with a splatter of scarlet on it that – to his homicide detective’s jaded eye – at first appeared to be blood. But Thursday put his other senses on the case. “Red paint and linseed oil,” he pronounced, sticking his nose into it. “That figures.”

“Sir?”

“You use linseed oil to mix certain types of oil paints. A bucket full of linseed-soaked rags like this one will light up as sure as any tinder. Doesn’t even need a match. Just leave it in a bin and it heats up as it dries. Then _fssht_ , up she goes.” He snapped his fingers.

“Don’t think I knew that,” said Strange, scratching the back of his head.

“A lot of people don’t.” Thursday sniffed. “This stuff’s an arsonist’s best friend. It would have looked just like the professor here made a costly but run-of-the-mill household mistake, not like arson at all. Those men must have dropped this rag as they passed through here on their way to the barn.”

“But where would they be coming from? There’s no through-way here,” said the professor suddenly. “The boxwoods grow so thickly, it’s as good as walled in.”

The two detectives blinked at each other, then looked around at the four firm walls of green boxwood surrounding them. “How about that,” said Thursday.

“Maybe they stopped in here for a bit of a huddle?” said Strange. “Go over the plan for burning the barn?”

“Maybe,” said Thursday doubtfully.

With no other explanation in sight, there seemed little else to be done in the garden. Yet still Thursday lingered. “Is there anything special about this space?” he asked. “Anything at all?”

“Not unless you’re over-fond of cabbages,” said the professor with a shrug.

Oddly, this turn of phrase seemed to suggest something to the DI. His eyes widened.

“Sir?” said Strange.

“Like Peter Rabbit among the cabbages…” he said slowly.

Professor Blair’s lips pressed together shrewdly. “My memorable simile of the other day. You’re right, Inspector – this is also where Raleigh and I found Morse last Monday."

“Why would those men come here? Why would _Morse_ come here?” asked Thursday.

The professor shook her head. “I honestly don’t know. There’s nothing at all remarkable about this place. It’s just what you see. A coincidence.”

“Did Morse mention anything to you about it?”

“Well, he did ask after it. How old it was, what the family that owned this farm was like, how they made their money, that sort of thing. I took it for polite small talk.”

Jim Strange raised his eyebrows very high at that.

“What did you tell him?” asked Thursday. “Please, anything at all you can remember.”

She glanced briefly at the sergeant, as if trying to see if his confusion with Thursday’s line of questions matched her own. “Well,” she said, drawing the word out. “I told him that the land around here was mostly tenant farms at one time. It all belonged to a large estate. Blair Farm was once part of Home Farms, actually…”

“Go on,” said Thursday eagerly.

“Both farms comprised the ‘home farm,’ you see, which means it was the property operated by the landowning family for the support of the mansion. I’ve heard stories that the family kept a very fine table back in those days. Quite _wild_ parties. It’s said that the Prince of Wales himself was often a guest, as well as half the great families of the British Isles. Quiet places like this have a long memory for that sort of thing…”

“When was this?”

“Oh, the 18th century. But the family experienced some reversals in the late Victorian period. Bad investments and gambling debts and all the usual aristocratic vices and palaver. Eventually the repeal of the Corn Laws in the 1870s finished them off. The estate was eventually split up and my parents bought one of the parcels. This is all just history, Inspector. Just as I told Morse.”

“What was the family called?” pressed Thursday.

“Chandler, I believe. But really, Inspector, I can’t see what this all has to do with anything.”

The detective frowned. He reached up and scratched under his hat, the rain running down the brim like a leaky downspout.

Without another word to them, he began to wander around the garden. He was finally beginning to feel the cold damp seeping into his old bones, but still he did not hurry. He paused to note all the small pieces of mildewed statuary that leaned haphazardly in the mud. He examined the boxwood hedges for possible gaps, and slowly paced the length of every vegetable bed as if taking inventory of nascent turnips and carrots.

Thursday tried to imagine Morse doing this – Morse, whose native soil was music; whose milky skin would turn rosy at the merest touch of sunlight; whose indifference to food meant he barely knew swede from sweet potato – and his imagination failed rather miserably. He could only picture Morse as the professor had described him: standing here in the garden, wet and cold and shivering and looking very much out of place.

“What were you looking for, Morse?” he whispered aloud.

The distant echoing whine of sirens announced that the tardy fire brigade was, at long last, on its way. Jim Strange seemed to take the sound as his cue to stroll up to his boss with an air of studied nonchalance, hands in pockets. “What d’you reckon, sir? Time to take the old lady back, eh?”

Thursday shook his head. “There’s got to be something here.”

“You’re as soaked through as I am, sir. Let’s get someplace warm, what do you say?”

“Better go on then,” he said impatiently. “Take her back to the cottage. Talk to the firemen. I’m not done here.”

“Sir…”

“Morse was here. That has to mean something.”

Strange’s voice was gentle: “But he’s not here now, sir.”

Belatedly – far too belatedly – did Fred Thursday realize that it wasn’t entirely rational to insist on standing out in the cold after the day they’d just had. Jim Strange was looking at him with such concern that he wondered if he seemed to his sergeant as faded and exhausted and in denial about those facts as the little old lady shivering behind them in layers of damp, crocheted jumpers. He sighed heavily. “Just a few more minutes, Jim. However little it might be. It’s what I can do.”

With solemn eyes, the sergeant nodded.

The truth was that Thursday had very little left to give this wild goose chase. Arthritis in his joints and exhaustion setting in, he could only trudge stiffly onward. The last bit of the garden he had left unexplored was the broken-down greenhouse. It was made of wrought iron whose paint had mostly molted off, leaving rusty scales of white around the foundation of the little structure. Thursday stood in the doorway and toed a pane of broken glass, then squinted around. There were rain-spangled cobwebs. Mossy, mildewed window leads. A few vines that had grown fertile on incidental soil. But in the end, it was the absence of all this antique profusion of decay that caught his attention.

“Strange,” he said urgently. “Come here. Look…”

The floor of the greenhouse was made of large paving stones. All of them were strewn with shattered glass panes from the greenhouse ceiling and shards of old ceramic pots, but the largest paving stone in the middle of the floor was conspicuously clean. It also had two sets of big, muddy footprints leading away from it. In fact, one footprint seemed to be all sole and no heel – as if the other half of the print was _underneath_ the paving stone.

“What in the world…?”

“Get me something to pry it up,” said Thursday eagerly. “There’s something under there.”

“What? What have you found?” demanded the professor, hurrying up to them.

Strange had procured an iron rod. He handed his DI a shovel. “Don’t know yet,” grunted Thursday. He stuck the blade of the shovel into the gap between the stones. He pried and Strange levered, and a moment later popped it up.

The empty space looked as solidly black as a square on a chessboard. Thursday took out his smoker’s bits from a damp and tweedy pocket and lit a match, dropping it into the space below. The flame fell about ten feet – illuminating a timber-walled tunnel – then sputtered out in a mud puddle.

Strange let out an oath.

“Good _God_ ,” breathed the professor. Her eyes had gone very round. “It's - oh but it's...!” She clapped her hands together. “Oh but it’s _marvelous_! Where does it _go_ , Inspector?”

“I think Morse told you exactly where it goes,” said Thursday. “What was it again, Professor? Something about a ‘weedy bank’…?”

“ _On meadow and river and wind-wandering weed-winding bank_ ,” she said immediately. “But what on earth can you be thinking?”

“All I know is that this tunnel appears to be going south toward Binsey,” said Thursday. “Damned if I know what it all adds up to, but we’ve got to take a look. Strange, fetch us a torch from the Jag.”

As the sergeant took off jogging, the blaring of sirens announced the arrival of the fire engines in the paddock. “I’ve got to go meet the firemen,” said the professor, looking very regretful indeed. “You’ll tell me what you find, won’t you? It’s not often a police detective finds a secret tunnel on one’s property.”

“Don’t know about that.” For the first time in several very long days, Fred Thursday’s eyes crinkled with his usual good humor. “Strictly speaking, Professor, this is the second time inside of a week.”

She let out a bark of laughter and shook her head in wonderment. He could hear her quoting as she walked away: “ _But the Glory of the Garden lies in more than meets the eye_ …!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: a cobra entrancing its prey


	17. DeBryn

Doctor DeBryn had stayed toiling by the hot light of his desk lamp far longer than he had planned to that Christmas Eve. There were elderly relatives who were expecting him to raise a glass of sherry, and a favorite cousin who made an excellent pork roast, but the doctor had clung instead to the austere and echoing silence of the mortuary. A sheen of sweat covered his brow, and unconsciously he had become tetchy and overtired – a brittle mood to go along with careworn thoughts. 

At five o’clock, with a sigh, he decided that he could no longer delay reckoning with the holiday hour. He began to pack up his medical bag. It still contained the records Morse had asked for. The pathologist had kept them always to hand, even going so far as to sleep with the bag on his nightstand next to his nightly cup of chamomile. Pulling those records had been a favor at first – “one of Morse’s larks” the young constable who relayed the message had called the request, and it sorely grieved the pathologist’s conscience to remember that, privately, secretly, he had not entirely disagreed.

Keeping those records safe had become a penance, a burden to be carried until the moment when Morse could explain the mystery himself.

The jarring ring of a telephone broke the stainless steel quiet. It was the white hospital phone that was mounted on the wall – it had no external line, which meant that whoever was calling was hospital staff. With Morse now allowed no visitors, the pathologist had been promised updates from the intensive care ward if there was any change in his condition, yet DeBryn still let the phone ring twice, three times, before he picked it up. His voice was strangely hollow: “DeBryn.”

“Good evening, Doctor,” said an impersonal voice he did not recognize. “This is the main lobby calling. There’s a PC Thomas here, he says he’s been sent to fetch you but doesn’t know the way.”

“Ah,” said DeBryn, exasperation flooding turbulently into the space vacated by suspense. “Yes… Fine. Tell him to wait.”

DeBryn spent a moment carefully locking the door of the mortuary. He tried the handle to make sure it was secure, then turned toward the rear of the Radcliffe’s basement where there was a slow, creaking service lift. It was this lift that took deceased patients from the hospital proper down to the mortuary, and all but a few veteran orderlies avoided it. Luckily for DeBryn, this meant that there would likely be no one aboard to harass him with idle chitchat, and the doctor was in a mood to avoid the world of the living as much as possible.

A wave of humidity and the smell of soap flakes wafted toward him as he passed the laundry, the drone and clack of industrial dryers hard at work despite the holiday. He passed along the rest of the support spaces for the hospital’s vital but unsung work: the housekeeping offices, the electrical rooms, the machine shop, the kitchen, the orderlies’ break room. Scuffling yet further along, DeBryn passed hulking old pieces of equipment – iron lungs, operating tables, rusted filing cabinets – that had been covered in plastic and staged along the walls, gathering dust and spiders’ webs as they awaited disposal. The lights at this end of the corridor were on a track of fluorescents, about half of which had flickered out and not been replaced, leaving intervals of near-complete darkness. He was passing through one of these intervals when he was startled by a noise close at hand.

It was the sound of someone quietly whistling.

Blinking, DeBryn looked around himself. He saw no one at first: just the draped ghosts of discarded medical equipment. Then a slight movement in the dark caught his eye. There was a set of exit doors that were always bound with a length of chain and a heavy padlock. A man was standing in this doorway, his back to DeBryn. He was whistling a series of soft, chaotic, mindless notes.

DeBryn watched in alarmed silence as the man finished whatever he was doing and turned toward the service lift, doing a double-take as he realized he had been observed. “Well, look who we have here,” he said quietly. “The sawbones.”

“It’s ‘Doctor DeBryn,’ if you please,” said the pathologist. “And you’re Detective Sergeant Landrum.”

The sergeant was a large man. Heavy limbed and broad-shouldered. He had a dull, small-eyed face made interesting only by its crooked nose. There was a pause in which it felt polite, expected even, for the sergeant to say something – but he did not. He merely stared at DeBryn, hands in pockets, standing with remarkable stillness in the deep shadows of the hospital corridor.

“This area of the hospital is out of bounds to visitors,” said the doctor stiffly. “May I ask what you’re doing here at this hour?”

“What are _you_ doing here at this hour?” echoed the sergeant, and added in a soft, unexpected little singsong: “No one special waiting under the mistletoe at home?”

“Nor for you, obviously.”

DeBryn rather regretted this retort. He prided himself on his sangfroid, his barbed restraint, and his schoolyard rejoinder had rather taken him by surprise. He cleared his throat, and started again in calmer, more professional strain: “DS Morse’s attackers are still at large. Perhaps you’re here to maintain a police presence in the building?”

The sergeant merely smiled.

DeBryn’s fingers tightened around the handle of his medical bag. “As a member of the faculty at this hospital, I’m afraid I have to insist on knowing what your business is. This area is out of bounds.”

“I’m a detective sergeant working on an inquiry,” said Landrum. “What do you think my business is, Sawbones?”

“It’s _Doctor DeBryn_ ,” said the pathologist again, with an air of imperturbable calm he no longer felt. “And I couldn’t possibly say. Why don’t you explain?”

With an impassive face, the sergeant strolled closer. His hands were in his pockets, his rumpled coat and jacket pushed back from his hips. He hunched lower so his face was close to DeBryn’s. “You broke the rules when you blabbed all about our case to Good Old Fred this morning, didn’t you?”

“I did,” admitted the doctor.

Landrum gave a long-suffering sigh. “Wasn’t Fred’s case though, was it?”

“No.”

“And we’re not a bit sorry, are we?”

DeBryn raised his chin. “No.”

Landrum’s face broke into a smile of surprising friendliness. “Loyalty, eh? That’s rare.” He jerked his head in the direction of the exit doors. “I’m just here making sure all the exits and entrances are secure. That padlock wasn’t closed, so I shut it. The orderlies have a key. They’ve been using that exit for smoking breaks, I expect. Anyone might have wandered in here off the street, and who _knows_ what baddies might have mischief planned. Fixed that, didn’t I?”

DeBryn blinked behind his owlish spectacles, surprised by the sergeant’s sudden acquiescence. He glanced at the door, but it was too dark to see if the sergeant’s tale about the padlock was true.

Landrum looked entertained by the doctor’s scepticism. “Go on,” he said. “See for yourself.”

“I’ll take your word for it,” said DeBryn coldly.

“Go on,” said Landrum. “I know you want to. Can’t help but double-check, can you. Go on.”

With the heat of discomfiture creeping into his cheeks, DeBryn went to the door and checked that the padlock was, in fact, secure. 

“All right then, Sawbones?”

“Yes, very well,” said the doctor, and turned to leave.

Without warning, the world spun like a globe. It came to an abrupt stop with DeBryn sitting on the dirty cement floor, winded and with his glasses clinging to the end of his nose and one earlobe. It took him a full three seconds of blank shock to realize that he’d been pushed. He had landed on his derrière with the least possible grace and all the air knocked from his lungs. He’d thrown out a hand to break his fall, and his left wrist burned with sudden pain.

“You went to Fred behind our backs,” said the sergeant, leaning over him, still wearing that smile of unlikely friendliness. “The DI let you off with a good scolding, but me? I take disrespect like that real personal, like.”

Incredibly, he reached out to help DeBryn up off the floor. Wheezing, the doctor scrambled away to the sound of that man’s laughter.

“Don’t you _dare_ touch me again,” seethed DeBryn, fumbling to fix his glasses back on his nose.

“Oh, come on, Sawbones. I can tell you like a bit of roughhouse.”

DeBryn had dropped his medical bag when he fell. It lay on the floor between him and the sergeant’s feet. DeBryn reached wildly for it, but the sergeant scooped it up first. “Blimey, you carry this around all the time? Bit heavy for an ickle little pouf like you, innit? Let me help.”

“Give that to me – !”

But the sergeant was already undoing the snaps. There, in plain sight, were the records about the Home Farms fire that Morse had asked DeBryn to keep safe.

And just like that, Landrum wasn’t smiling anymore.

The sergeant’s small, hard eyes stared him down like a cobra entrancing its prey. The doctor froze. All air seemed to have left his lungs. But in that moment, his mind flashed not to the obvious danger he was in, nor to thoughts of escape. 

It went to Morse.

To Morse – and to the last person Morse saw before his brilliant mind went dark.

And the pathologist’s gaze dropped to Landrum’s left ring finger…

The lift at the end of the corridor dinged, and the doors opened. Two uniformed orderlies stood in the bright light of the lift, looking bewildered to find the pathologist sitting sprawl-legged on the cold concrete and a strange man looming above him. “Everything alright here?” said one, coming forward.

“Doc took a little spill,” said the sergeant, not looking away from DeBryn. “Seems he’s had too much holiday cheer.”

“I’m perfectly alright,” snarled DeBryn, getting to his knees. “I have _not_ been drinking.” The doctor was entirely unable to prevent the brawny sergeant from taking him by the arm and yanking him to his feet with a show of grand helpfulness. “My, my, Doc, you’ll have to go easy next time,” said Landrum, laughing cordially. He then had the gall to use his boat paddle-sized hand to take a swipe at the dust on DeBryn’s backside.

“Take your hands off me. _I’m perfectly alright_ ,” said DeBryn, twisting away from his touch as if scalded. “Give me my medical bag!”

“Course, Doc. I’ll just hang on to what’s rightfully DI Tucker’s, though, eh?” Landrum took the records out of the bag, and handed it over.

“Would you like me to call you a cab, Doctor?” said one of the orderlies.

Chest heaving, glasses askew, DeBryn stared in voiceless fury at the blandly smiling police sergeant. He had been outmanoeuvered and he knew it. He turned on his heel and marched off toward the lift. As the doors closed, he heard Landrum cheerfully hail the orderlies: “Happy Christmas, boys. Can a poor copper get a cigarette? I’m _gasping_.”

**************************************

Slow and creaking, the service lift took the pathologist to the main lobby. He was breathing hard. Cinder blocks tagged with decades of graffiti passed behind the metal grating as the lift rose haltingly, floor by floor. The light overhead flickered. Every detail felt strangely magnified through his red haze of adrenaline. 

He’d lost the records. Morse’s records.

DeBryn dragged a sleeve across his sweat-slicked forehead as the doors opened on the main floor. He marched up to the reception desk. “What is it, then?”

The receptionist blinked, and a young constable who’d been lazing against her desk leapt immediately to attention. “I’ve – I’ve been ordered to fetch you, Doctor.”

“It’s you again, is it?” DeBryn found himself unreasonably maddened to find that it was the same young constable who’d brought him Morse’s cryptic message the day of the assault.

“Yes, Doctor,” said the young man, almost apologetic. “Constable Thomas.”

“And you couldn’t remember the way to the mortuary?”

“No, sir,” mumbled the boy to his shoes. But his puppy-dog gaze seemed drawn back to the pathologist, and he said with rather hesitant concern: “Are – are you alright, Doctor?”

DeBryn exhaled slowly and removed his glasses. He took a monogrammed handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the lenses – front and back – with diligent little circles of his thumb. When this was done, he perched the glasses back on the bridge of his nose and widened his eyes at the young police constable. “I’m perfectly alright, thank you. Now what’s so important you need call for me tonight?”

“A body’s been found, Doctor. Looks to be murder.”

“Where’s this?”

“At The Oxford Mail.”

There was a pause. “Who is the victim _?_ ”

“I don’t know yet. I expect it’s a reporter, though, don’t you, sir?”

The pathologist pursed his lips demurely, the better to keep back a vinegar retort about the young man’s grasp of the obvious.

“They’re having a hard time tracking down DI Tucker,” continued the young man. “Seems he’s gone to Bicester for the night – spending Christmas Eve with family, but the Duty Sergeant hasn’t been able to reach him yet. We’re supposed to fetch DS Landrum too, only no one knows where he is – ”

“And we don’t have time to look for him,” said DeBryn. “Lead the way, Constable.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the trailing touch of a clammy finger


	18. Strange

“Give us that torch. Can’t see a damn thing.”

Jim Strange held the cold metal flashlight out to the darkness. A shape moved ahead of him, accompanied by the sound of Fred Thursday’s brogues sliding and sucking at the mud. The DI muttered a curse under his breath. “The ground’s like chocolate pudding just here, watch yourself.” The torch was taken from Strange’s hand, then aimed further down the tunnel.

The beam of light was more atmospheric than useful. The air was full of moisture and dirt particles that made it disperse into a vague halo. But it was enough to see that there were long planks of rough-hewn wood laid along the ground, interspersed by mud puddles, and water trickling from overhead. The walls and ceiling of the tunnel, likewise, had the same broad planks of wood groaning to support them. There was no end in sight.

The tunnel seemed to go on forever.

“Blimey,” said Strange, for perhaps the tenth time since they had found this blasted place. He felt robbed of all parts of speech that were not weakly exclamatory. The miasma of cold soil and mildew made the place smell like a charnel house – a sepulcher, a tomb. A shiver ran up his broad back like the trailing touch of a clammy finger.

“Wait – wait, stop a moment, sir. I don’t know about this.” Strange’s voice didn’t carry at all. It was instantly deadened by the thick walls of wood and earth. A man could scream and scream down here and have a snowball’s chance in hell of ever being heard by someone above ground. “It doesn’t look safe.”

Thursday gave a huff of impatience. He took a few exploratory steps, testing the wood, looking anxious to leave the last rays of natural sunlight behind. The DI and the Professor had both found the discovery of the tunnel exhilarating – their haggard, exhausted faces had both lit up with wonder at the sight of it, as if it were an adventure story from childhood come to life. But Jim Strange had felt no such delight. There had been, in fact, no part of this long day that had not twisted his habitual complacency into knots. 

Thursday turned back to aim the torchlight at his sergeant. Strange blinked at the sudden glare, putting up a hand to shield his eyes from the beam. The DI grumbled something under his breath. 

“What did you say, sir?”

“I said you’re right,” growled Thursday, and then he turned and spat out a mouthful of soot. “Go on back, Jim. Wait for me at mine.”

“I’m not leaving you down here, sir,” he said, almost sputtering with horror at the idea. “Let’s call this in. We’ll do it properly tomorrow, with back up.”

The old copper’s lip curled, the deep shadows in the creases of his face turning ugly. “There’s no back up from Kidlington. Cavalry’s not coming.”

“That doesn’t make this a good idea,” said Strange, a little desperately.

Thursday dragged a sleeve across the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “This is the first real lead I’ve had all week. You think I’m going to abandon it now? Go back, Jim. Won’t think the less. But I’m doing this.”

“Sir, you’re in no state to –”

“Morse did it,” said Thursday harshly, cutting him off. “Least I can do is follow.”

Strange pressed his lips together in a twisting frown. He knew that in any other week of Fred Thursday’s five-year partnership with Morse, finding out that his wayward bagman had undertaken such a harebrained escapade as this would have resulted in an almighty bollocking. It was positively _crackers_ to go wandering about in this bogeyman’s cave, yet here was Thursday, determined to follow Morse like Alice after the white rabbit.

Strange didn’t understand it. Shaking his head, he let out a deep exhalation, his humid breath hanging for a moment in the torchlight. “Alright,” he said heavily. “If you’re going, so am I. Lead on, sir. I’ll follow.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

They didn’t talk much as they moved through the tunnel. It was not quite tall enough for them to walk upright, so both men had to venture forward at an awkward crouch that left them both sweaty and puffed, their neck and back muscles strained as they crept along. The thick boards beneath them occasionally broke apart under their weight, too saturated with moisture after a century underground to support the bulk of one blundering copper, never mind two. Their feet were caked with mud and debris, and after a mere quarter hour of walking, Thursday was leaning heavily against the wall as he ventured forward, wheezing and panting and still coughing raggedly from all the smoke he’d inhaled during the fire. Strange was close enough on his heels that he subtly helped his boss forward by pressing a hand to his back.

There were places where the ground had worn away and the planks had caved in. The wild Thames had encroached, eroding the tunnel so that the wooden ceilings had sagged and the walls had bowed. There was even one stretch – much to Strange’s deep-seated horror – where they had to sink down into waist-deep groundwater and wade across to the other side. “Jeeezus,” said Strange, teeth chattering as he forded the frigid water.

As they moved farther inward, a smoky scent of sawdust began to undercut the smell of cold earth. The colour of the muddy, weathered wood around them began to change. The planks became pale, naked, and freshly cut, the strokes of the ax that had felled the lumber leaving it still raw and sharp to the touch.

With a muttered oath, Thursday missed his footing between two planks and lurched, crashing into the wall. He pulled his hand away and shook it out.

“Alright, sir?”

“Fine. Fine,” he growled. “Just a splinter.” 

He plucked the shard from his palm and moved on. They walked a few more yards when he suddenly stopped again. He just stood there, leaning against the wall, palm flat, fingers splayed, wheezing as he faced the long darkness in front of him. The back of his tweed coat was covered in soot and dirt and patches of scorched wool, giving him something of the look of an old, stooping scarecrow. Strange thought that exhaustion must have finally caught up to the Old Man, but then the sergeant heard a low, rusty, bewildering noise that raised the hairs on the back of his neck.

Fred Thursday was laughing.

Strange only had time enough to register this astounding fact before a loud, soot-stained _guffaw_ worked its way up from the old copper’s chest. He pulled off his hat and roared with laughter, doubled-over. He then turned to Strange with a look of dumbstruck amusement on his sweat-drenched face.

“What is it, sir?” said Strange, thoroughly spooked. “Is – is something wrong?”

“Jim,” he said, wild-eyed. “Jim, I’ve been so stupid. I’ve only just realised. Look at this. _Look_.”

To Strange’s blessed confusion, Thursday closed his hand into a fist. He then knocked on the wood-lined wall with three brisk raps as if knocking on a door. The day had become such a topsy-turvy fairy tale that Strange half-expected some kind of horned devil to reply with an answering knock. “It’s _poplar_ ,” said Thursday.

Strange blinked at him.

“This whole tunnel is built with poplar,” said Thursday. “ _These_ are the Binsey bloody Poplars.”

When Strange utterly failed to look enlightened or even say a word, Thursday exhaustedly rubbed the heel of his dirt-smudged hand into one eye. “God. What would he say about it taking me so long? ‘More under my hat than nits,’ I told him once. A hell of a thing, always being three steps behind your own bagman...”

Strange’s honest face crinkled up in dismay. “Sir, I – I don’t – ”

“It’s a poem, Jim. A Victorian poem about trees that were cut down on Home Farms a hundred years ago. Oh how does it go?” He reached up under his filthy, ash-and-mud-covered hat and scratched his head. His face was liberally smeared with soot and dirt, gathering in the wrinkles of his skin where sweat had carried it. “Felled, felled, are all felled. Not spared not one. On meadow and river and wind – um, weed winding something or other. Never mind, I don’t know. But Morse knew.”

_God, what if the Old Man had really cracked?_

“The Binsey Poplars,” said Thursday again, a little exasperated. “You don't have to look at me like I'm off my trolley, Sergeant. A hundred years ago, someone cut the poplars down so they could build this tunnel with the wood. There wouldn’t have been any record of it, and the whole thing would have remained a secret if it weren’t for a wandering poet – and a hundred years later, a brooding, stubborn-arse, poetry loving detective sergeant. They’ve been clearing trees again because they needed to repair the tunnel. Morse must have seen the felled lumber at Home Farms and went to investigate the coincidence.”

“But _who_ , sir?” said Strange, trying gently to keep him focused. “Who built this tunnel?”

“As soon as Morse got to Blair Farm, he asked the professor who owned the property a hundred years ago. She said the family name. Chandler was it?” continued Thursday, now talking more to himself than to Strange. “She said they owned all of the neighboring farms once. They had all been tenant farms of the main estate. I wonder if there are more tunnels than this one? Could be an entire maze of tunnels down here, Jim.”

“But to what end?“

“I don’t know yet. But Morse must have figured it out. Somehow, he knew to come looking here – he’d made a connection that nobody else made. That’s why they needed to silence him. That's why they hurt him so badly, that's why – ” The words caught in his chest, hitching with a ragged gasp. He gave a little shake of his head and tried to go on: “The obstinacy and recklessness and bloody-minded _brilliance_ of that boy, sometimes I.... ” Even by the torchlight, Strange could see the wet shimmer in Thursday’s bloodshot eyes, the muscles working in his throat.

“Sir…is Morse not expected to survive?” asked Strange softly. “No one will tell me as much but…”

The old man turned away.

Strange followed him in silence. He kept a watchful eye on the inspector as if afraid he would come apart at the seams right in front of him – just fray and unravel and come undone, pulled apart fiber by fiber until Strange was left to pick up the unrecognizable shreds.

The tunnel had become unbearable. Strange didn’t want to dwell on his current surroundings, and it took him a while to realize that they had been slowly and gradually going downward for a while. “Jim,” said Thursday thickly, voice muffled as he came to a stop. “Jim, there are stairs here.”

“Do they go up?” he said, pitifully hopeful.

They descended further into the earth. Strange stopped counting after the tenth step. If he was going to stumble into a secret passageway to hell, he honestly didn’t want to think about it too much.

Thursday had got a little ahead of him. The sergeant could hear the steady thud of the older man’s footfalls on the wooden stairs, but suddenly the sound of them changed – they were lighter, harder, more scuffed. There was a moment of quiet followed by a shout: “Good God!”

And then the torchlight disappeared.

“Sir?” said Strange, his voice not traveling even a foot in front of him. He reached out, touching nothing but clammy air. “Oh no,” he said. He stood where he was, sweating and paralyzed, gripped by childlike terror. “Sir? Where - oh Jesus - Fred!”

“Steady on, Sergeant,” said Thursday, his sooty damp shape coming back into view. He shone the halo of torchlight back at Strange. “You’ve only got three more steps down, and then it’s flat ground. Come and look.”

Strange obeyed, and almost instantly he realised that his surroundings had undergone a vast change. Gone was the rough-hewn surface of the wooden planks. Gone was the earthen silence of the tunnel. Gone the claustrophobic sense of having been buried alive.

“Blimey,” he whispered, wide-eyed, and even this soft word echoed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: his own fragile life


	19. Strange

Telling Jim Strange that he had no imagination and thuddingly average smarts would hardly have stung him as an insult. These were merely facts. Facts that Strange himself had always failed to find much fault with, truth be told. He’d been born a plump and happy middle-class child of uncurious intellect and plenty of good sense – the opposite, in every way, from his counterpart in rank. As such, Jim had always been perfectly happy to let Morse be the brain: the interpreter of Oxford’s thinky, plotty sort of deeper mysteries. But as the good sergeant stared, utterly at sea in his surroundings, he wondered why he had never truly considered what he would do if Morse were…gone. Because here he stood, confronted with something that had no business in all of Her Majesty’s rational England to be where it was, and there was no Morse to explain it to him.

Gold and porcelain and glass. He saw them glinting at him like the shining eyes of sleek cats, narcissistic and complacent in the dark. There were riches down here in this goblin’s cave. Nictitating, fulsome, sumptuous and strange – he didn’t understand it. It was as if a magic spell had sunk a portion of Buckingham Palace a whole fathom underground. It was a space so large that the light of Thursday’s torch only hinted dimly at the paneled walls of the room, decorated with wall silks of blood red brocade and golden carvings of scrolling acanthus leaves. There were massive paintings with gilt frames featuring Greek nymphs reclining in various poses of indecency, their cool moon-colored flesh seeming to ripen into the third dimension against backgrounds that had blackened matte with age.

All this barely had time to register before the torchlight flickered and went out. “Gawwd,” moaned Strange, but it immediately came blinking back to life. 

“Battery’s dying,” whispered Thursday, voice nevertheless echoing. “Come on. Mind how you go.”

The old veteran began wading through the perfect darkness, torch held out in front of him like a sword to slice it. Jim held on to his Guv’nor’s coattails like a scared child, glancing sharply now and then over his shoulder. In such halting fashion, they came to a pair of identical candlestands, standing chest high, carved delicately and draped in a fine gossamer veil of spiders’ webs. They had _Chinoiserie_ crenellations that guarded the translucent-bodied tapers that stood upon them, like twin Rapunzels in matching towers. He ruthlessly kidnapped one of these damsels and handed it to Strange, digging into his pocket for his dampened matches. “Better to light a candle,” muttered Thursday, not without gallows humour, “than to curse the darkness.” In the end it took three muttered curses and half the matchbook before one lit with a whiff and hiss of sulfur. Thursday then lit the other candle with the first, and stowed the torch in his coat pocket for later.

The two coppers then continued on, their candlelight guiding them – though Strange thought bitterly that all the candles accomplished was to multiply the gloom into thousands of separate, rippling shadows, moving around them like an inky sea. From their frames, the Greek nymphs’ mischievous eyes appeared to follow the men as they moved with hushed footsteps through the impossible room. Immense plate glass mirrors caught the halo of their candlelight and reflected it endlessly, showing shadowy visions of the sergeant and the veteran repeating ever smaller into darkening infinity.

Exploring step by step, two flames’ worth of territory at a time, it was impossible to get a real idea of the space, to see a whole picture of what was around them. Strange was plagued by the clammy notion that all sorts of unseen creatures might be following him in parade, and he wouldn’t even know it. He kept glancing over his shoulder as if he might catch them out. The man who had prided himself on having no imagination was viscerally terrified of turning around to find a somber, pale, ghostly figure behind him in the dark. Perhaps a familiar one. Walking with them and yet holding himself a little apart, both a comrade in this adventure but also at the cruel heart of its mystery. Big, mournful, pleading eyes might be following them, noticing everything, knowing all, but not able to speak a word…

Hot wax spilled down Strange’s hand and he cursed wildly, dropping his candle and losing the flame. “Sorry,” he mumbled. “I’m sorry.” He got down on the floor to feel around, tentative, afraid of what he would touch in the dark. 

“Easy there, Jim.”

Thursday got down on the ground with his sergeant; he couldn’t help but grunt and groan at the arthritic reluctance of his joints, the stiffness of his muscles. His tired, pouched eyes gleamed, and his face had settled into a sort of softened, resigned sadness. “Sam never much liked the dark either,” he said in his low, baritone rumble. “Used to tell him it could only ever be as dark as the backs of his eyelids.”

Strange huffed a laugh. A rush of concerned affection for the old boy flooded through him. But when he opened his mouth to say something, he found that nothing presented itself. His twisted his lips together in silence instead.

The floor was hard under their knees. Just massive flags of naked limestone, still with the crosshatch of quarrymen’s chisels upon it, cold and damp from where the living earth pressed its cheek up from below. At last Strange’s hand closed on the warm beeswax. He lit it against Thursday’s, and then he helped his boss up with a grunt and an off-balance lurch. They bumped into something that squawked and crashed to floor, causing Strange to yelp.

“S’alright. Just a chair knocked over. Look.”

There were dozens of them. Sitting there like a silent audience. Some had fallen apart: a pile of sticks and unraveled silk. But others were still gathered in little groupings around baize-covered tables, set up as if waiting for aristocratic ghosts in waistcoats and wigs to come back to their gambling and carousing. Eerily, most of these little groupings had been shifted across the room, pushed out of center – moved like furniture on the deck of a great storm-struck ship, listing in long tide-lines of wood and old-fashioned flotsam, as if some unseen currents had pushed them all against the walls. It reminded Strange of a story he had heard once about a vessel that had become lodged in ice at the top of the world, its antique contents preserved like a pearl inside an oyster for generations far in the distant future to discover again.

“What’s moved it all around?” he wondered aloud. “It’s all been pushed away. To the edges.”

“To make room,” said Thursday.

“Room for what, sir?”

Thursday was squinting at something on the floor and didn’t answer. He moved a few more paces away, then held up his flame to a genteel marble fireplace with clean Neoclassical lines – utterly spoiled by having been completely bricked up. It was now a screaming mouth stuffed sloppily with red clay. Further down the wall, there appeared to be the foot of a rather grand stairway trying to ascend out of the room, but it likewise ended in a solid wall of brick and mortar. “A stairway to nowhere,” said Strange, and he shuddered. 

“They walled this place up,” said Thursday, a hoarse whisper in the dark. “Sealed it up and hoped everyone forgot. And mostly, Oxford did forget. Just a legend about wild parties and a family sunk in aristocratic vice.”

“What is this place, sir?” whispered Strange.

Thursday cracked a cynical smile. “I might not know history – or art – but I’ve a copper’s nose, and I know _sin_ when I smell it.” His expression hardened. “This was a den of iniquity, Sergeant. And still is.” With a look of instruction, he lowered his candle to illuminate what he had previously noticed on the floor.

“What the…?” said Strange, reeling away as if from a snake.

It was an electrical extension cord.

Thursday followed the cord to its source: a trunk-sized electrical generator surrounded by lights on tripods. Grunting, the DI gave the generator crank a few quick turns and switched it on, the whir and clatter of the motor horrendously loud in the echoing room.

Suddenly everything was awash in electrical light. Both coppers blinked and covered their eyes, and when they looked again, it was like they’d been transported somewhere else entirely.

They were standing in a ruin – no magical sunken palace, no haunted mansion full of unseen presences. This was merely a grand and beautiful room abandoned to tragic disrepair and the ravages of time. There was a thick rime of dirt and decay on every surface, and the red brocade walls were moisture-ruined and stained with great black clouds of mildew. A rat scurried along the wall. All the silver was tarnished black. Dainty Sevres porcelain tea sets had been tossed in an unforgivable heap, just hand-painted piles of turquoise and gold shards. The mirror glass had turned brown and cloudy with time, and was as cracked as a spider’s web. Even the seductive nymphs looked rather tacky lounging about in the altogether in workaday fluorescent.

The two coppers could now plainly see that there were other obvious anachronisms besides electricity in the room: a shocking number of gas-lamps, a student’s mortarboard cap and gown, and a stray copy of _The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes_ lying next to a top hat and cane. There was a welter of Oriental lounges and carpets rolled tight as jam rolls, but if they had been laid out properly, Strange thought the room might strongly resemble old illustrations of Victorian opium dens. Strange walked over to a chair and picked up the bloated, yellowed copy of _Jackson’s Oxford Journal_ from its lap. “July 25, 1879,” he read aloud. “What year is it, any way?”

“Still 1969, Sergeant,” said Thursday, pointing.

And Strange saw what all the antique furniture had been pushed out of the way to make room for: none other than plastic and tubular steel office furniture so common in 1969, it might well have been pinched from Cowley nick.

“Well, I’ll be,” said Strange, eyes widening. “Someone’s been busy.”

Gathered around these office tables were scores of slat crates, stuffed with packing straw. Thursday put his hand into one of these crates and brought out a brick of something wrapped in aluminium. He peeled back the wrapping, revealing a cake of white inside. He gave the stuff a censorious sniff, then – to Strange’s surprise – a lick. “Opium,” he said, and tossed it back into the crate with disgust. He turned his head to spit.

“They’ve been running drugs out of here, sir?”

The old veteran didn’t answer with more than a squint. He was already investigating a tower of cardboard boxes filled to bursting with packs of cigarettes. Strange joined him, and the two coppers went through the thieves’ inventory of whisky bottles, vodka, illegal prescriptions, and several crates filled with pistols and sawed-off shotguns.

“Blimey,” said Strange.

“A smugglers’ paradise, this,” said Thursday darkly. “Ali Baba’s cave.”

Strange looked around. For all of its exotic trappings, what he saw around him took no education or imagination at all to interpret. He was looking at a modern criminal enterprise, no different from the back room of one of Eddie Nero’s fronts.

“Got their fingers in a lot of pies, then?” he said, finding himself on firm ground at last.

“Used to see it in Mile End,” said Thursday thoughtfully. “Some firm moves in, takes over the whole works. A to Z. Stolen goods, gun running, drugs, you name it. All the small-time local operators learn to kowtow – and worse,” he said darkly, “so does CID.”

Strange nodded, understanding the warning.

“Well,” said Thursday, his mouth working as if the words had left a sour taste. “The rot creeps in.”

“Perfect set up for it, really,” said Strange, thinking it through. “A secret, secluded bolthole. And a network to smuggle it around town for sale. All out of view. This rabbit warren seems made for the purpose.”

“Don’t you think it wasn’t. Generations of vipers knew about this pit, Jim. Someone’s been hiding their misdeeds underground for two centuries.”

“Who though, sir?” said Strange. “The Chandler family? Are there even any Chandlers still in Oxford?”

“That’s what Morse knew, and what you and I are going to have to find out. Come on,” he said, nodding his head toward where the tunnel continued onward. “Whoever they are, they might well come back after all the excitement at Blair Farm. We’d best be on our way.”

They found that the southern direction of the tunnel was not immediately lined with the familiar wooden poplar boards. First it was red brick and barrel-vaulted, seemingly of the same Georgian vintage as the grand room Thursday had termed the “den of iniquity.” There were darkened alcoves on either side of the corridor stuffed with what appeared to be wine racks, most of which were freshly stocked with bottles of alcohol that had clearly fallen off the back of a lorry. One of these alcoves, however, had a heavy wood-and-iron door guarding whatever was inside. “Put your shoulder into it,” said the DI, doing likewise. The two of them grunted and shoved, eventually pushing in.

The smell of acrid, tangy chemicals rose up to meet them – a smell not unlike vinegar. There were shallow tubs in front of them with tongs sitting in each bath of pooled liquid. A clothesline with wooden pegs was extended across the width of the room. Long spools of film and newly developed photos had been pinned there to dry.

Thursday looked around for a light, and when he flicked it on the room was bathed in a devilish, red glow. By its light, they could see that a stack of developed pictures lay on the table, and Strange reached out to pick it up. The image on top of the stack was a photo of two men, sharply dressed and having dinner in a bohemian Soho bar. One of the men – a bespectacled chap in a three-piece Dandie Fashions suit – was covertly feeling up the other man’s thigh.

Strange cleared his throat. “Golly,” he said primly.

“Wicked thing, blackmail,” said Thursday, shaking his head.

The blackmailers had succeeded in digging their hooks into every level of Oxford society. The rest of the stack revealed a don _in flagrante_ with a student; a couple of police constables from Kidlington smoking pot while in uniform; petty vices; sackable offenses. There were university-aged children of titled peers: sweaty, strung out, and embarrassing their parents. A secret assignation between City Council members in Christ Church meadow. Immoralities. Misdemeanors. Private peccadillos and malfeasance. The sordid dirty laundry of Oxford was in the good sergeant’s hands as he flipped from one photo to the next – until he reached one that stopped him cold.

The Old Man inhaled sharply.

The astonishing eyes of Endeavour Morse were looking up at them. His gaze was almost directed straight at the camera, yet there was a rare lack of focus in his wide eyes that suggested he had not realised he was being observed. The expressive lines of his forehead were creased between his brows, and a hand reached up to worry the curls at the crown of his head – a pensive gesture of Morse’s as familiar to Strange as the back of his own hand. Morse was wearing his shabby old car coat. The collar was popped up, and he seemed to be ducking a little into himself, hunching his shoulders against the December frost. He was hurrying along the Broad, the façade of Blackwell’s Bookshop visible behind him.

Strange went to the next photo, then the next. The photographs were showing him second by second, in sequence, like a fitful news reel: one hand jamming into a pocket, the other clutching at his collar, head down, the wind stirring his unkempt curls. He was walking along – and then he looked up.

Shock. Blank, unholy alarm. His expression was one of high-wire tension, a living moment captured in frozen black and white.

“What’s wrong? What does he see?” cried Thursday, his own eyes wide and black and saturated in the red light of the darkroom.

Strange flipped to the next photo. Morse was now talking to a woman, a blonde whose back was to the camera. Morse’s expression was a familiar one: his lip was curled, his brows raised in violent indignation. Whatever they were saying to each other, this had not been a friendly conversation.

Thursday stood transfixed. He moved not a muscle. “Who is that woman?” he said hoarsely at last.

“I – I don’t know, sir.”

“You don’t recognize her? You’ve never seen her before?”

“No, sir,” said Strange. “Honest. I haven’t a clue who she is.”

Strange looked at the picture again, and even though he could not see the woman’s face, he was sure he’d never seen her with Morse before. She had more poise, more presence than that timid blondie he’d brought home one night the previous spring, because whoever this woman was, she was more than holding her own against the indomitable detective. The camera had caught her mid-gesture, hand raised in emphatic gesticulation. A white mink stole around her neck suggested that she was an expensive bit of skirt, whoever she belonged to.

“Look – look,” said Thursday. “There, in the background: the newspaper advert in the street. Can you make it out? What’s the date?” His age-spotted hand trembled slightly as he pointed.

Strange cast his boss a fleeting look of concern, then looked where he was ordered. In the fuzzy background, just beside the heavily blurred figure of a dark-haired woman, there was a sandwich sign advertising The Oxford Mail.

“ _Monday, December 20, 1968 – Flurries in Oxford Tomorrow_ ,” read Strange.

“That was the day before Morse was attacked,” said Thursday. “Those are the clothes I found in his bedroom, all muddy. Those are the clothes he was wearing when he found this tunnel. This photograph must have been taken earlier that same day.” He held both hands out, pointing at each finger as if counting off the facts. “I know he was at Exeter College at noon for a recital. The organist said he left there around one o’clock – tore out of there like he had an appointment, he said.”

“And one of the PCs on my canvass reported that Morse was seen at the Post Office on the Broad around two o’clock,” finished Strange. “So…could this woman have been Morse’s mystery appointment?”

“Strange,” said Thursday. “Look at her hand…”

The woman was wearing a wedding band on her third finger. It was a gaudy thing, ugly and ostentatious. The band was thick gold with a prominent diamond at its apex. It was a rather heavy and masculine ring for the woman’s dainty finger, but not otherwise remarkable. Puzzled, Strange looked back at his boss, not liking the odd, stupefied glaze in the old copper’s eyes at all. “Sir?”

“The ring. On her finger.” Thursday’s words were coming slowly, with difficulty, as though every word cost him in blood and sweat. “DeBryn told me… The injuries to Morse’s face…” He swallowed hard. “Whoever did that to him was wearing a ring. A wedding ring just like that one. With a sharp, faceted gem.”

“You think she – ?”

“No, no,” said Thursday, roused to impatience. “Not her. DeBryn said whoever attacked Morse was powerful. Skilled with his fists. I’m saying some couples get wedding rings _to match_. His and hers. We’re looking for this woman’s _husband_.”

As Strange absorbed this information, Thursday snatched the photos from his hands and eagerly flipped to the next one in the stack. Two very large men now loomed over Morse, crowding the blonde mostly out of frame. The men had the appearance of bodyguards or policemen or pool hall bouncers – big and calm and self-assured, like they did this kind of bodily intimidation every day of the week. The shutter had clicked just as one of them shoved Morse hard in the chest with a meaty right hand, fingers thick as sausages, rocking the slightly built detective back on his heels. With eyes blazing, chin raised in defiance, Morse was shouting angrily back at him.

“Aw, matey, _no_ ,” moaned Strange softly.

A muscle was twitching in Thursday’s jaw. He turned to the next photo, but the sequence was over. The trail had ended with Morse standing toe-to-toe with his own destruction.

The Old Man stood unmoving for a moment, nostrils flared – quite still – breathing hard, but with a kind of dangerous restraint. Then with a sudden, clumsy movement, he reached for the photos on the clothesline, nearly ripping the whole line down.

"Sir – ” said Strange, putting a hand on his boss’s arm.

Thursday cast him off. He snatched down every remaining photo but, finding them all useless to him, threw them aside in a flurry of paper. “Look at all the film,” he barked. “Every last negative. There’s got to be something.”

“Sir, I don’t think –”

“You’re here to follow orders, Sergeant,” snapped the Guv’nor, and there could be no argument.

Strange helped him hold up every last frame of film to the darkroom light. They examined every square on every contact sheet, went through every last photograph, but Morse had once again slipped through their grasp. There was no further trace of the elusive detective.

Strange stood in wary silence, watching his boss as he took deep breaths that rattled through his frame, wracking his shoulders. “We should go,” urged Strange quietly. “Please, sir. There’s nothing more for us here.”

“This was the day _before_ ,” whispered the old man in a low voice, both broken and thick. “There was still time. I could have stopped it. I would have done anything – _anything_.”

“You couldn't have known, sir.”

“But why didn’t I know?” he demanded. “Why didn’t he come to me? He must have known he was in over his head. Why didn’t he tell me he needed help?”

“That’s just him. That’s just Morse. It's not your fault."

“I’ve been trying to teach that boy to value his own neck for five years, and I didn’t make _any_ of it stick. Look at him in that photo, just look at him! He’s a bloody _genius_ and I couldn’t even teach him not to pick a fight with someone bigger than him. First rule of the bleedin’ _schoolyard._ ” The words had thunder banked down in them, and his voice grew in rumbling crescendo of agony as he went: “Not my fault, you said. Whose fault is it if not mine? Couldn’t I have managed to get anything through that head of his before they cracked his skull for him? Couldn’t I have taught him to mind how he goes before they bled the brilliance right out of him? _Not my fault?_ ” 

“There was nothing you could do, Fred," said Strange earnestly. He tried to put a consoling hand on Thursday’s shoulder, but with sudden, surprising violence, the old copper pushed him back hard with both hands, nearly knocking him off balance. “You think I would have let those bastards _torture_ my bagman? To leave him for dead in the snow like some kind of rubbish for me to find? To blind him?”

Strange went cold. He stared aghast. 

“ _Why didn’t he tell me_?” cried Thursday. And with a roar like a wounded animal, he overturned the table in one abrupt somersaulting motion, sending the tubs flying, the chemicals splashing, the photographs flurrying around the space like a blizzard. The whole mess landed on the floor with a wet slosh and clatter.

One last photograph hung in the air, floating lazily. When it landed at their feet, the image was face up. On it, there was a picture of Endeavour Morse standing toe-to-toe with the two threatening brawny henchman on the Broad, just as before.

But this photo was different.

In this photo, it was possible to see who was standing behind him, gripping his sleeve. It was possible to see whom he was protecting. Whom he was guarding. Armed with nothing but his fearless scrutiny – his snarling intellect – and his own fragile life.

It was Joan Thursday.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next: the stoic man of science


	20. DeBryn

As they drove, the skyline of Oxford sank into rain-softened night. The streets had emptied of all but a crowd in front of the University Church of St. Mary, lining the High Street with figures muffled in winter finery for the Christmas Eve choral service. The stained-glass windows glowed with warm candlelight, and the heavenly chords of the choir spilled out even into the street. Young PC Thomas showed an unexpected sensitivity by silencing the squad car’s siren as they passed.

“I expect you wish you were at home this evening,” said Doctor DeBryn.

“S’alright, Doctor,” said the young man. “No one at home, anyway.”

They were silent the rest of the way.

When they reached The Mail, PC Thomas stayed behind to relieve the uniform on duty at the door. Doctor DeBryn took his medical bag and hurried up the twisting iron staircase of the staff entrance. He met two police constables just inside. “Gentlemen,” he said. “Where’s the body?”

“Up this these steps into the bullpen. Then straight to the back, Doctor. The editor’s office.”

DeBryn’s heart sank. “Ah,” he said.

It was cold enough inside the building that the doctor could see his own breath as he trundled along. The large, single-pane warehouse windows of the reporters’ bullpen made it a drafty place in the best of times, but with the Paper closed early for the holiday, the steam-heat radiators had been turned off. There were intricate patterns of frost on the windows. DeBryn made a mental note of all this – it would be needed for his calculation of time of death.

The doctor passed worktables full of advertisement mock-ups. Messy reporters’ desks and typewriters, littered with mimeographs and neglected mugs of cold tea. There were papers scattered on the floor. A dustbin had fallen on its side, and the remains of someone’s wadded up, discarded drafts had landed in a trailing, dark puddle of liquid on the floor. The crumpled white paper had then unfurled, blossom-like, like a white lotus transformed into a soggy, trampled rose.

Blood.

The puddle was not fresh. DeBryn’s eyes were expert enough at this stage in his career to tell at a scant glance that it was at least an hour old. His shrewd gaze followed the trail of blood from the paper-clogged puddle toward the rear of the bullpen, toward where the constables had promised him a body.

And there it was.

In the doorway of the editor’s office. Sprawled diagonally. Face as pale as moonlight. Its eyes were wide and dark and staring at the ceiling, its blood stained hands still clutched to its belly in a pointless attempt to stanch the fatal hemorrhage. A pool of blood as placid and still as a mirror spread out beneath him.

It was a man’s body – a man whom DeBryn did not recognize.

“Just one more day, that’s all I’m asking. Joe – _Joe, listen to me_ …”

Dorothea Frazil paced into view behind the body, a telephone receiver pressed to her ear as she carried the handset with her. An anxious constable appeared next to her, trying to herd the formidable lady away from the corpse. “Really, Miss Frazil, I must insist – ”

“Insist my _arse_ , I’m on the _phone_.”

Thus was the constable utterly disposed of, and thus did the editor return to her one-sided shouting down the phone: “You’re making a big mistake, Joe. Yes, I damn well am telling you how to do your job. How can you publish it when he’s lying _dead_ right here _on my floor_?” She then paused to listen, her eyes rolling in disbelief at whatever the man on the other end of the line was telling her. “I don’t care if you’re satisfied! You don’t know anything about the people involved, _I do_.” She listened to his answer, shaking her head. “No, no, I can’t believe that, I just can’t. Iain got it all wrong somehow. Joe? Joe? Oh, _fuck you_ ,” she said vehemently, realizing she’d been hung up on. She slammed down the receiver.

Doctor DeBryn approached. “Miss Frazil?”

She looked up, wild-eyed. “Oh,” she said, and for half a second something like relief crossed her features. Then her face fell. “You must be here for poor Iain.”

“Have you been hurt?” asked DeBryn, coming forward.

She followed his concerned gaze to the dark stain of blood on her skirt, her knees, and the sticky smear of red down the heel of her hand. “Oh,” she said, giving a sort of shrug and a gesture toward the dead man all in one jerky movement. “It…I – well, it was dark.”

DeBryn merely nodded. He would let the horror of tripping over a dead body in the dark speak for itself.

“I – I had just got back.” Her distracted fingers clawed back a frizzy clump of hair that had fallen over one eye. “I suppose it was almost an hour ago? I’m – I’m not sure. He was like that when I got here. Dead. I didn’t touch anything else.”

“Except for the telephone,” snapped the constable. “And the desk. And the _bar cart_ – ” He added, with particular vehemence.

“Thank you, Constable. Please fetch a cup of tea for the lady, if you would be so good.”

He frowned. “Tea?”

“Yes, tea,” said DeBryn mildly. “Quite, quite hot. With plenty of sugar.”

“Where should I go for - ?”

“Oh. To China if you must, Constable.” Not even looking at the man, DeBryn set down his medical bag next to the body and snapped it open. “Plenty of sugar, mind.”

With a huff, the PC left them alone. The newspaper editor seemed to collapse with his departure, as if her ire at the interloper was the last thing keeping her upright. She sat down heavily in a chair and reached for her rolling papers with trembling fingers.

“I’m afraid I can’t allow you to smoke in here,” said DeBryn. “But I see you have a tumbler of scotch there…”

She huffed a laugh.

“I don’t suppose there’s any harm in finishing it now. But in the other room, perhaps? You might be more comfortable there.”

She gave him a sad, heavy-eyed little smile. She nodded. “You’ll come and chat when you’re done?”

“Of course.”

The pathologist retrieved a pair of latex gloves from his bag, put them on with a snap, and got to work.

There was no pulse beneath the cool clammy flesh. Life was indeed extinct, and date and time were solemnly recorded. DeBryn then began manipulating the body, trying to establish the extent of _rigor mortis_. The victim’s mouth and eyes were gaping open – a fact that made the professional spare a pitying thought for the amateur who had, to her horror, literally stumbled upon him. DeBryn then gently attempted to manipulate the jaw, but found it stubbornly resistant. The lids of the man’s staring eyes likewise declined his gentle insistence to rest. The limbs of the corpus, however, still moved with the flexibility they’d had in life.

Adjusting his glasses, the pathologist made note of these observations in his little moleskin notebook. And then out of sheer force of habit, he announced his conclusion aloud: “Death likely occurred between two and three hours ago.”

“Cause of death?”

It was their usual call and response. Morse’s part came to mind as readily as the next line of a nursery rhyme. DeBryn glanced toward the door of the editor’s office as if Morse himself, with his usual quick step, had appeared there on the threshold. A scene like this – a wide dark pool congealing, the tang of blood iron thick in the air – would have spun the young detective on his heel as his colour drained to nothing. And there he would stand, his slim frame silhouetted, back firmly to the corpse, shoulders rising and falling with balletic tension. “ _Cause of death_?” he would say again hoarsely.

“Furthers and betters after the PM…”

A long-suffering sigh.

  
“…but I will say that these two stab wounds to the kidney were _unlikely_ to have had a salutary effect.”

“Murder, then,” Morse would have said, looking up at the heavens.

“Oh yes,” said DeBryn quietly. “Certainly murder.”

The victim had been stabbed twice in the abdomen. Up and in. Direct wounds to the left kidney. He had bled out quickly. From the first shock of the blade finding the soft vulnerable flesh under the twelfth rib, to the moment the last thought rattled through the man’s brain like the last penny in the jar, less than five minutes had elapsed.

Messy, violent, but highly effective. “A professional hit,” suggested Morse’s influence.

“Whoever killed this man certainly knew what he was doing,” agreed DeBryn. “And he couldn’t have minded that he had to look his victim in the eye. A habit of violence, at the very least.” He paused. “Much like the man who tried to kill you.”

“But not necessarily the same man,” came the counterpoint.

“True. It is a very different _modus_. But just how many cold-blooded killers do you think are running around Oxford this week, exactly?”

“Have you ever known them to be in short supply?” The quick flash of a blue eye, the arch of an eyebrow. “Besides. I would hardly call the man who tried to kill me ‘cold-blooded.’”

Somehow, the comparison surprised him. “Indeed,” DeBryn whispered aloud.

The pathologist was careful to remove his gloves and all visible reminders of his occupation before he rejoined Miss Frazil in the reporters’ bullpen. The line of tall windows along the south wall had their blinds drawn at different heights, creating a piano key-like pattern across the floor: some rectangles were darkened, others shortened, others lit brightly by the streetlamp outside the building. He found Miss Frazil sitting in the longest slant of light, back to the window, her humbled shadow elongated across the floor in front of her. 

“Are you alright, Miss Frazil?” asked the doctor gently.

The newspaper editor made no reply to his question, but instead gave a vague nod toward the silent man in her office. “He was in Korea with me, you know. Dodging bullets. We hid in foxholes during bombardments. And he dies here of all places.” She gave an arid laugh. “He would have pretended to find that funny.”

A moment of unhurried, heavy silence passed between them. “Can you tell me his name, Miss Frazil?”

“Iain,” she said, not looking at him, not looking at anything. “Iain Ewell.”

“Was he one of yours?”

“No…no. He works for The London Daily Star.” She didn’t say anything more for a moment, then she looked up at DeBryn with wide, faraway eyes. “Who’s coming? Thursday?”

“Ah.” He searched for the right words. “It will be Detective Inspector Tucker, I believe. From Kidlington. They’re trying not to burden Detective Inspector Thursday at present…”

“Morse.”

She had spoken his name so softly. It was as if she was afraid that just by speaking it, she might shatter something so fragile it could never be mended. Her eyes were dark with fear.

DeBryn bowed his head. “Where there is life, there is hope.”

“Hope,” she repeated, an odd lilt to the word – as if she couldn’t quite recall its definition. “How is Fred coping?”

There had been a moment that morning when Doctor DeBryn was sure that Fred Thursday was going to strike him. With his hands balled into fists as they clutched the mangled remains of handcuffs still sticky with his sergeant’s blood, there had been no logic, no reason left in the old man’s bloodshot eyes. There was no veteran detective. Only a man grieving as furiously as any father would.

“He’s not,” said DeBryn simply.

Dorothea Frazil closed her eyes. “I’m supposed to have seen it all,” she said softly. “I’m a newshound. Hard as nails. Brass neck. I’ve been called a hundred epithets: synonyms for ‘heartless’ every one. But this?” A long silence, then she exhaled: “So much for that.”

There was a gleam of amber still left in the whiskey tumbler, and when she opened her eyes she brought it to her lips. But instead she stopped and looked at him – a long, unwavering examination, eyes wet with stilled tears. “That was a terribly self-pitying thing to say to a doctor. A pathologist. The stoic man science.”

He looked away, blinking rapidly behind his glasses. “Perhaps it would be. If I were ever a man of science where Morse is concerned. But I am merely a humble believer. And I continue to keep the faith.”

To his surprise, she held out the glass to him then. And to his surprise, he took it.

“What would he say to us, we two?” she asked. “Believing in miracles...”

“Something rather acerbic, no doubt.” He almost smiled.

“No doubt,” she said, and added softly: “But he, all the while, the most faithful believer of all.”

That made his breath catch.

Her words had been a shrewd scalpel, slicing apart the defenses he’d so busily girded around his heart to cut off the circulation of pain. Let loose, set free, despair surged hotly into his bloodstream. He had not let it in before now. He had not let himself think seriously of what it would cost him to lose that dear, singular creature from this world. In a panic of emotion, he gulped the whiskey down, causing his eyes to water at the burn of single-malt. _The stoic man of science, indeed_ , he derided himself, applying the scorn like a cauterizing agent.

In the end, centuries of grafting DeBryn genetics to the rigid English tradition won out, and if the reporter noticed anything more than a fleeting ripple betray itself in the doctor’s face, she was too distracted or, perhaps, too kind to notice.

She pulled over a chair and patted the seat. “Come, Doctor. I have more to tell you before our friend returns from China with my tea.”

DeBryn did as he was told. Wet, heavy sleet had begun to fall past the window – it cast noiseless shadows across the floor, past their silhouettes stretched out in front of them, like they were sitting in a pantomime snowstorm.

“There’s going to be a story in The London Daily Star tomorrow morning,” said Miss Frazil, voice flat and matter-of-fact now. “Someone needs to warn Fred. He shouldn’t find it out from the paper.”

DeBryn’s heart constricted. “What story?”

“A special report from their star crime correspondent, Iain Ewell. Front page. Under the fold. Thames Valley Detective Sergeant E. Morse’s double life as a blackmailer.”

DeBryn’s mouth fell open in dismay. He sat blinking for a moment, his mind reeling. “Blackmail,” he repeated faintly.

“I tried to convince The Daily Star’s editor to spike it – no doubt you overheard how persuasive I managed to be. It seems Iain got Assistant Chief Constable Morton to go on the record about their evidence against Morse. Quite damning, according to the editor. ‘Admirable responsibility taken by the Constabulary,’ in the editor’s words. I gather, on the whole, it’s going to be rather complimentary toward Thames Valley.”

“Piffle!” said DeBryn at length.

“Do you mind if I roll myself a cigarette? I promise I won’t light it.” Miss Frazil dug out a pouch of tobacco and a case of rolling papers from her pocket, and put her shaky fingers to work at their familiar task. “This DI Tucker you mentioned is reported to have found betting slips in Morse’s flat. He’s claiming that Morse is in someone’s black books and desperately needed to satisfy his creditor. Who better than a gifted detective to sniff out the sins of the city he’s meant to protect? That was Iain’s angle anyway, and it’s a damn good one,” she said, not apologising for her frank assessment. “Iain’s editor is very keen to publish.”

“But what proof does he claim to have?” DeBryn’s cheeks flushed with indignation.

“Iain spoke to one of the blackmail victims, got the story straight from the horse’s mouth, apparently. More damningly, this DI Tucker claims that he shadowed Morse around Oxfordshire and caught him visiting the post offices where they know these demands went posted from and ‘consorting with known criminals.’ Iain’s notes say he examined Tucker’s photographs of Morse himself, and for all Iain’s faults, I’ve never had reason to doubt his honesty as a reporter –”

DeBryn scoffed.

She held up a placating hand. “I no more believe that Morse is guilty than you do. That boy could sooner sprout wings and _fly_ than turn criminal. But someone’s gone to serious lengths to discredit him, and it was Morton and Tucker who fed Iain this story.” She leaned forward in her chair, unlit cigarette pointing emphatically at the doctor. “Iain came to Oxford with information that there’s a dangerous new firm in town. London mob types, he thought. He suspected that a contingent of Thames Valley was collaborating with them, and I think he mistook Morse for one of their number. He chose Morton and Tucker as his allies instead, and I think he’s paid for that miscalculation with his life.”

When this alarming theory about police corruption was met with only a prolonged beat of grave, brow-furrowed silence on the doctor’s part, the reporter’s astute eyes narrowed. “What do you know, Doctor?”

“I am not a detective…” he began to demur.

She pulled a very droll face, crossed her arms, and sat back in her chair. “In the absence of anyone named Morse or Thursday or _even Strange_ , I’m afraid you’ll have to do.”

He looked down at the floor and blinked. “Dear me.”

It had been perversely soothing for the pathologist to focus on a corpse and a lake of blood upon arriving at The Mail. It allowed him to relocate his distressingly physical encounter with DS Landrum to the back of his mind, permitting the haze of adrenaline and pulse of emotion to fade as the cooler concerns of science and medicine took over. But now DeBryn was forced to pause and look closely at the incident, and to untangle his legitimate suspicions about the sergeant’s activities from his deep-rooted, and still rather flustered sense of shame at the encounter.

Miss Frazil quirked an eyebrow at him. “Start with the lede,” she suggested, not unkindly.

“I had a rather…” DeBryn paused, starting again: “I had a rather alarming visit at the Radcliffe just before I was summoned here on Mr. Ewell’s account. A visit from Detective Sergeant Landrum.”

“Landrum?” she said, frowning. “He’s one of the sergeants over at Kidlington, isn’t he? Big bloke. An enforcer type. Looks about as charming as a sprouted potato.”

DeBryn suppressed a smirk. “The very man. He’s Detective Inspector Tucker’s bagman.”

“Is that so? And what’s this Landrum doing visiting you at the Radcliffe on Christmas Eve?”

“Well he was hardly Father Christmas,” said DeBryn, widening his eyes. Then he pronounced unequivocally: “He was there to steal records from the mortuary.”

“Go on,” she said with an avid gleam.

“That day you ran across me at The Head of the River, Morse had sent word to keep some records safe for him. I put them in my medical bag and took them with me, hoping to speak to him about it later that day. After I saw you, I discovered that someone had ransacked my file cabinets at the mortuary. Nothing was missing, of course…”

“Because you’d taken the records to the pub with you,” she concluded for him. “And what happened tonight?”

“There’s a door in the cellar level of the hospital – the laundry workers’ entrance on the north side, not far from the mortuary. It’s supposed to be kept locked, but I found DS Landrum there as I was making my way to the lift this evening. I think,” he said, slowly and with bitter regret, “that Landrum had just sneaked into the hospital, and I happened to deliver precisely the records he needed right to him. How _expedient_.”

“What kind of records were they?”

“Post-mortem reports. There was a fatal fire at a place called Home Farms last summer...”

Dorothea Frazil gasped.

There was a sound in the stairwell: increased noise from the police constables guarding the entrance below, and the unlikely pair hushed as they strained to listen for the sound of footsteps on the stairs. Louder conversation, the sound of a door – then the noise died down again. It seemed to be just a changing of the guard.

“Go on,” said Miss Frazil urgently. “Tell me about this fire.”

“Four men were killed. They were all horse trainers and stable-hands from Ireland.”

“Any criminal records? Gangland contacts?”

He shook his head. “By all accounts, they were honest men who didn’t even have Oxford connections. The fire was determined to be an accident, and I found nothing during the PMs to gainsay that conclusion. Each man died of smoke-inhalation or burns or some highly unpleasant combination thereof.”

“So nothing to tie them to any sort of criminal scheme? No indication of foul play, no unexplained broken bones, no bullets in the bodies…?” The pathologist shook his head decisively as Miss Frazil went through her frightful litany. “Why would Landrum want to get his hands on those records so badly if they don’t show anything incriminating?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Well there’s got to be something in all this, something that was missed at the time of the fire. Maybe the fire wasn’t an accident at all? Fred always said County couldn’t find their arse with two hands and a map – ”

“Ah,” said DeBryn, holding up an admonitory finger. “It was Morse himself who closed the Home Farms case.”

That was enough of a stunner to set the reporter back in her chair.

They were silent a moment as she kneaded her lips with her fingertips, thinking furiously. “They’re frightfully clever if they got anything past Morse. And they’re cleaning up after themselves now. No more Iain. No more loose ends. No more paper trail. These are _very_ dangerous men.”

The image of Morse lying in that hospital bed – too weak even to breathe on his own – intruded on the doctor’s thoughts. He closed his eyes against the memory.

There were sounds of restlessness from the constables below, sounds that almost certainly meant that their time in quiet confidence together was rapidly running out. “Listen, I’ve a lot to tell you and we don’t have much time,” said Miss Frazil, glancing over her shoulder. “I was up in London today chasing a hunch. Suffice to say my hunch imploded before my second cup of coffee, but I picked up this Home Farms connection myself.”

“Did you indeed?”

“While I was in town I asked a former colleague in London to suss out if there are any relevant records at the Old Bailey for me. Meanwhile, I got back to Oxford and visited the archives at the County Council to find out the property history of the place. Who owned it, bills of sale, census records, etc. etc. My visit was rather short. There _are_ no records of Home Farms at all. Nothing. Going all the way back to the Domesday Book.”

“You think they’ve been stolen?”

“Makes sense doesn’t it? It would be nigh on impossible to prosecute them for activities at a place that doesn’t officially exist. One of the archivists remarked that Home Farms and its environs had been popular inquiries recently. What’s more, for an expensive bit of bribery, he told me a _detective_ had been interested in them. What if it was Landrum? Cleaning up the County Council just like he did the Radcliffe?”

In her zeal, the reporter reached out and gripped the pathologist by the wrist. In the hour or so since Landrum had, with so much easy dominance, shoved the doctor to the floor, the joint had stiffened and bruised – a painful sprain by which to remember the man. He could not help but draw a sharp breath through his teeth.

Miss Frazil’s expression quickly shaded into understanding. “Used muscle, did he?” she said grimly.

“Indeed,” he said, voice flat.

She nodded. Her next question was the logical one: “Doctor… Might this Landrum have been the one who hurt Morse?”

“Alas. I know that he was not.”

The doctor had more to say – that much was obvious. She waited for him.

They sat in silence, letting sleet streak past the windows, looking out over the stilled workspace, changed forever by its sudden baptism in blood. From their vantage point, it was not possible to see the palled face and bloodied hands of the corpse, but his legs were visible in the doorway of the office. Miss Frazil was aware of this fact; DeBryn knew this not by seeing her catch sight of the dead man’s expensive shoes – splayed with a mixture of pathos and bleak absurdity – but by her dogged refusal to look in that direction. A clump of her frizzy, silver-streaked hair had fallen over one eye, but she had not bothered to push it back this time. She was occupying herself instead – her mind and her still-trembling fingers both – by rotating the unlit cigarette over her index finger and into the gap between middle and ring fingers, then into the gap between ring and pinkie fingers.

DeBryn observed this practiced sleight of hand with distant curiosity. He wondered first if she had learned this little parlour trick to pass the time in one of those foxholes she had mentioned, perhaps with the dead man as her sardonic companion as the bombs fell.

Then DeBryn remembered with a sudden flash – and a kind of strange detachment – the moment that Landrum loomed over him in the hospital corridor. He recalled the vacantness of the man’s face. No curled lip, no villainous scowl, only blank inhumanity in his hardened eyes. In that instant, DeBryn thought that he had found the devil responsible for snuffing out the brightest, most exquisite mind in all of Oxford.

But then his gaze had flashed to Landrum’s left hand – where the wedding ring should have been. Where any sort of ring should have been. And when the sergeant reached out for the medical bag with his right hand rather than his left, all notion of salvaging justice from ruinous despair instantly evaporated.

“We cannot help our training,” said DeBryn quietly, breaking the silence at last. “When we’re young, we learn Occam’s useful Razor: that the simplest solution is usually the correct one. A helpful principle in the science of deduction, certainly. But this model creates a deep-rooted predilection in doctors, in policemen, and, you’ll pardon me, in reporters – to distill the available information into the tidiest explanation.”

He paused and blinked behind his spectacles, his head tilting in that owlish way he had when he was considering a riddle, and certainly Morse was nothing if not a riddle that defied the Razor. “Part of what makes Morse such a rarity among his fellows is that he allows for complication. For reckless assumption. For leaps of insight. For emotion. To Morse, detection is less like logic – and more like poetry.”

Her face softened with understanding. “You think there’s something else.”

He nodded.

And again – as she had done at random intervals over the past four days – Joan Thursday appeared in the doctor’s memory: standing perfectly still, face as white as the gathering snow, a golden halo from the streetlight above her dark head. Snowflakes danced all around her. They landed in her hair like a veil of fine lace. She was staring at the front door of her childhood home – at the funeral wreath hung there to mark the impending death in the family…

A jeering taunt that was almost certainly _not_ meant for Joan – but for her father. 

The realization conjured up the memory of Fred Thursday at the Radcliffe. It was a memory still as painful as a gut wound: the old copper reaching out a trembling, cautious hand to lay an infinitely tender palm on his young sergeant’s forehead. And then a flash of Thursday as he appeared three days later, standing in the doorway of the mortuary: grey and gaunt, stiff and hollow-eyed.

As if grief were a wasting disease.

“When is a cold-blooded crime not cold-blooded at all?” asked DeBryn, tilting his head. “When it is emotional, of course. When it is _intimate_. When it is personal.”

Her brow creased with distress. “What do you mean?”

“If only I knew,” said the doctor, shaking his head. “I can only say that I think that Morse was not just the victim. He was the weapon.”

Loud voices in the stairwell. Their time had finally run out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Not to sound needy but...I'm totally needy so please say hello if you're still here! :-)
> 
> Update: Next chapter might be late. Flailing and adrift even more than usual. Please send cake. And possibly whisky.


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